“Ah, Miss Mainwaring, have you too been listening to Lord Ben Nevis’ speech? Not a bad speaker, though he gets rather in a tangle with his quotations sometimes.” Joan would have liked to say something satirical, but nothing occurred to her. She had even to swallow her indignation so far as to talk quite amicably to this deceitful Lovelace, and to persuade herself into thinking that, though he might amuse himself for a few odd moments with that little Miss Lane, he found a taller, slimmer, less talky woman more permanently attractive. Still he had certainly been looking at Miss Lane, as he bent over her, where she sat in a corner of the tent, in an irritatingly admiring manner. The truth was, though he scarcely acknowledged it to himself, that he was really a little in love with Miss Lane. She was not only sweetly pretty, but “good style,” the best-dressed woman there, in his opinion, not even excepting his sister. And he had no intention of losing sight of her. And why should he? She was already predisposed in his favor; she had few friends--none who could warn her that he was a dangerous acquaintance; she was going to live alone a dull life which would make her hail with gratitude any companionship as pleasant as he felt his to be to her; he would have many a dull and idle hour in town which might be pleasantly filled up by the charitable act of taking the pretty, prim little lady to a theater, or he would not even mind a picture-gallery, if she proved entertaining enough to reward him for such waste of his time. It would be pleasant for her, pleasant for him; and, as she had no friends, it could do her no harm in the eyes of the world which ignored her. He left the ground, satisfied that he had put this matter well in train. She, meanwhile, in spite of one more degree of frost in the manner of her companions, went back to the Vicarage with them, feeling happier than she had felt for a long time. The kindly sympathy of this man, whose handsome face grew so soft when he spoke to her, and who had been her favorite among the Braithwaite brothers from the first, had taken her out of the shell of reserve she wore among the torpid natures around her. As she thought over the event of the day to her, that low-spoken conversation in the corner of the tent; recalled again each tone, each look of his; felt again in fancy the warm pressure of his hand, the question would rise in her mind, “Does he love me?” And she fell asleep, scarcely daring to hope, yet half believing that he did. At the moment when he said good-bye he had contrived to ask her on what day she was going back to London, and, almost without thinking what she was doing, she had told him. Would he be there to see her off, she wondered. But the little fantastic dream she was indulging was not to last long. Joan was the person to destroy it. Within a few days of Miss Lane’s departure she asked her mother at tea-time if she had heard that George Braithwaite was going to be married.