“Oh, no! Far from it, miss. I ask your pardon a thousand times for taking the word out of your mouth; but me and Ned is no more to him than your housekeeper or governess might be to you. That’s what I’m afraid you don’t understand, miss. He’s no relation of ours. I do assure you that he’s a gentleman born and bred; and when we go back to Melbourne next Christmas, it will be just the same as if he had never known us.” “I hope he will not be so ungrateful as to forget you. He has told me his history.” “That’s more than he ever told me, miss; so you may judge how much he thinks of you.” A pause followed this. Mrs. Skene felt that the first exchange was over, and that she had got the better in it. “Mrs. Skene,” said Lydia then, penetratingly; “when you came to pay me this visit, what object did you propose to yourself? What do you expect me to do?” “Well, ma’am,” said Mrs. Skene, troubled, “the poor lad has had crosses lately. There was the disappointment about you--the first one, I mean--that had been preying on his mind for a long time. Then there was that exhibition spar at the Agricultural Hall, when Paradise acted so dishonorable. Cashel heard that you were looking on; and then he read the shameful way the newspapers wrote of him; and he thought you’d believe it all. I couldn’t get that thought out of his head. I said to him, over and over again--” “Excuse me,” said Lydia, interrupting. “We had better be frank with one another. It is useless to assume that he mistook my feeling on that subject. I WAS shocked by the severity with which he treated his opponent.” “But bless you, that’s his business,” said Mrs. Skone, opening her eyes widely. “I put it to you, miss,” she continued, as if mildly reprobating some want of principle on Lydia’s part, “whether an honest man shouldn’t fulfil his engagements. I assure you that the pay a respectable professional usually gets for a spar like that is half a guinea; and that was all Paradise got. But Cashel stood on his reputation, and wouldn’t take less than ten guineas; and he got it, too. Now many another in his position would have gone into the ring and fooled away the time pretending to box, and just swindling those that paid him. But Cashel is as honest and high-minded as a king. You saw for yourself the trouble he took. He couldn’t have spared himself less if he had been fighting for a thousand a side and the belt, instead of for a paltry ten guineas. Surely you don’t think the worse of him for his honesty, miss?” “I confess,” said Lydia, laughing in spite of herself, “that your view of the transaction did not occur to me.”