She put a thin hand upon his coat lapel, and with the other picked invisible specks of dust from his coat sleeve, her eyes revealing by their moisture a ready harmony with his sentiment. “Farmer indeed!” said she with a gallant attempt at badinage; “you’re as little for that, I’m afraid, as you’re for the plough or the army.” She led him into her room and set a chair for him as if he had been a prince, only to have an excuse for putting an arm for a moment almost round his waist. She leaned over him as he sat and came as close as she dared in contact with his hair, all the time a glow in her face. “And what did you come down for?” she asked, expecting an old answer he never varied in. He looked up and smiled with a touch of mock gallantry wholly new. “To see you, of course,” said he, as though she had been a girl. She was startled at this first revelation of the gallant in what till now had been her child. She flushed to the coils above her ear. Then she laughed softly and slapped him harmlessly on the back. “Get away with you,” she said, “and do not make fun of a douce old maiden!” She drew back as she spoke and busily set about some household office, fearing, apparently, that her fondness had been made too plain. “Do you know what the Captain said?” he remarked in a tone less hearty, moving about the room in a searching discontent. “The old fool!” she answered irrelevantly, anticipating some unpleasantness. “He went out this morning in a tiravee about a button wanting from his waistcoat. It’s long since I learned never to heed him much.” It was a story invented on the moment; in heavenly archives that sin of love is never indexed Her face had at once assumed a look of anxiety, for she felt that the encounter had caused Gilian’s dejection as he rode down the street. “What was he saying?” she asked at last, seeing there was no sign of his volunteering more. And she spoke with a very creditable show of indifference, and even hummed a little bar of song as she turned some airing towels on a winter-dyke beside the fire. “Do you think I’m a failure, auntie?” asked he, facing her. “That was what he called me.” She was extremely hurt and angry. “A failure!” she cried. “Did any one ever hear the like? God forgive me for saying it of my brother, but what failure is more notorious than his own? A windy old clerk-soger with his name in a ballant, no more like his brothers than I’m like Duke George.” “You do not deny it!” said Gilian simply. She moved up to him and looked at him with an affection that was a transfiguration. “My dear, my dear!” said she, “is there need for me to deny it? What are you yet but a laddie?” He fingered the down upon his lip.