"There is no mistake, we _are_ in for a fog," she said jerkily, and she slipped her hand as she spoke back into the warmth of her big sable muff. It was not the first time that this man had unconsciously repulsed her; there were times when, in her irritation, she called him a prig. But she misjudged him; Rupert Haverford was not a prig, he was only a very straightforward, practical, in a sense, simple-minded man, who, like an explorer, was advancing step by step into an unknown world, meeting and mingling every day with elements that were not only new to him, but that belonged to a range of things about which he had never had occasion to think hitherto. Camilla herself was prominent amongst these new sensations; she at once was a bewilderment and a fascination. There had been no woman of this class in his life up to a couple of years before; indeed, women of any kind had played but a nominal part in the busy, uneventful, and certainly unpicturesque existence that had been his lot since early boyhood. Mrs. Lancing, of course, knew briefly the outlines of the story of this working man and his sudden and unexpected accession to wealth, and recognized clearly enough that Haverford was as far removed in thought and social education from the various men who fluttered in and out of her life as the sun is from the earth; but she had little discrimination. With her it was never a question of character or quality; fundamentally she decreed all men were alike, strong in prejudice, weak in temptation, selfish, and even tyrannical; vain and sentimental, uncomfortably moral at times, but amazingly loyal, and, as a rule, sensitively moved by the potent charm of a woman of her temperament and attractions. She liked men very much, she had many men friends, and few women friends, although the spontaneous effervescing sympathy, which was perhaps her most marked characteristic, made her very attractive to women, and accounted for her wide popularity; there was something so disarming, so delightful about Camilla Lancing. Beauty alone would never have given her a quarter the power she possessed; it was her ready interest (absolutely genuine for the moment), her quickness in associating herself with those things that were paramount with the persons who approached her, that made her irresistible to all sorts and kinds of people. She had the tact of a delicately fashioned nature, and a vast amount of endurance. But she was not patient, and the more she saw of Rupert Haverford, the more necessary he became to her, the less patience she had. He puzzled her; he piqued her; he annoyed her; he made her nervous. What were his feelings towards herself? "He is so horribly slow," she mused now fretfully, "he ponders every word he says. I suppose he is terribly afraid of making a mistake. I am sure his money oppresses him. He must have been ever so much nicer when he was working as a foreman, or drayman, or whatever he was before all this money came to him."