Both faces were darkening into frowns when the dinner-bell rang. When they entered the dining-room, as they did together a few minutes later, they found little Miss Lane completely engrossed by their youngest brother, a great overgrown lad of fifteen or sixteen, whose usual shyness with women had been overcome in a quarter of an hour’s _tête-à-tête_ with the governess in the drawing-room. He had placed her in the seat between his own and his father’s; but, before he had had time to sit down, George dropped quietly into the chair he was holding. “That’s my place,” said he roughly. “Mine for to-night, dear William,” answered his elder brother coolly, bending his handsome face close to that of the girl by his side. “This is a pleasure I have long wished for, Miss Lane,” he said, in the tender tones of the experienced flirt. She looked at him shyly, laughed and blushed. “It is very unkind of you to laugh. Don’t you believe me?” “Not quite, I think.” “Somebody has been poisoning your mind against me already, I see,” he said, with mock fierceness. “You would not pay any attention to what the juvenile William might say. It must have been Harry. It was Harry, was it not?” “Which is ‘Harry’?” “Harry is the grumpy-looking one over there--the one who came back in the carriage with you. He would give the world at this moment to pitch me out of the window.” “Why?” “Never mind why. It is his nasty temper.” “He wouldn’t find it so easy, I should think.” “No. We should be always pitching each other out of the window if we were not so well matched; as it is, when any of us are excited beyond endurance, we pitch the child out.” “The child?” “Yes--that great gawky boy who thought he was going to have all your conversation to himself by putting you between himself and my father. He hasn’t come to his full strength yet. We can still do great execution upon him if we take him unawares.” The talk continued chiefly on his side until the general conversation turned upon racing, and he hastened, with an eager interest which no woman could excite in him, to join in the argument that was going forward. When he again glanced at the girl by his side, she was looking puzzled and rather prim. “Our talk about horses and betting shocks you, I see,” he laughed. “You think it very wicked.” “No, indeed, I don’t. But I am not used to it. It is so new to me, at least, since I have been a governess.” “Since you have been a governess? Well, that can’t be very long. And did you hear talk like ours before?” “Not--quite like yours; but I have heard gentlemen talk about racing and theaters, and--things like that, at home, before my father died.” “Is that long ago?” “No”--rather tremulously. “Are you happy at the Vicarage?” “Oh, yes, they are very kind to me!” “So that now any conversation that is not serious surprises and distresses you?” “Oh, no; I like it!”