“I think of you almost as if you were my brother,” Maude went on, with heartless repetition of the obnoxious word; “and I cannot help thinking, dear Mr. Tredethlyn, that you are scarcely employing your life as wisely or as well as you might. I don’t think you were ever intended to be an idle man; and again, with such a fortune as yours, a man has scarcely the right to be idle. There are so many people who may be benefited by a rich man’s active life. Oh, forgive me if I seem to lecture you. You will laugh at me, perhaps, and think I want to set myself up as a strong-minded woman, a political economist, or something of that kind. But I only venture to speak to you because I think you waste so much of your time down here, playing billiards with the empty-headed young men who haunt this place, and lounging in the drawing-room to hear the frivolous talk of half-a-dozen idle women, myself among the number.” She spoke lightly, but she was not the less earnest in her intention; she was only travelling gradually round to the point she wanted to reach. “But I am so happy here,” cried Francis Tredethlyn. “Ah, if you knew how I have tried to stop away--if you could only know what happiness it is to me to come----” Maude Hillary interrupted him hastily. “Yes, I know it is a pleasant life in its way,” she said; “very pleasant and very useless. It is a little new to you perhaps, and seems pleasanter to you on that account. But if you knew what dreary work it is to look back at a long summer season of operas, and concerts, and horticultural meetings, and boat-races, and not to be able to remember one action worthy of being recorded in all that time! I am getting very tired of my present life, Mr. Tredethlyn. It has ceased to be pleasant to me ever since I have known of papa’s difficulties. It is altogether unsuited to me; for I am engaged to marry a poor man, who would bitterly feel the burden of an expensive wife.” The bolt was launched, and Miss Hillary expected to see some evidence that it had gone home to its mark. But Francis Tredethlyn made no sign. There was just a little pause, and then he said very quietly,-- “Yes, I know that you are to marry a poor man; but with such a wife a man could scarcely remain poor. I suppose it’s only an ignorant foolish notion, but I can’t help thinking that for the sake of the woman he loves, any man could cut his way to fortune. I can always believe in those knights of the olden time, who used to put a badge in their helmets, and then ride off to the wars to do all sorts of miraculous things; and I fancy it must be the same now-a-days, somehow; and that a man who loves truly, and is truly loved again, can achieve anything.” Maude was inexpressibly relieved by this speech. “You know of my engagement, then?” she said. “Yes, I have known it for a very long time.” “Ah, of course, Julia told you?” “Yes, it was Miss Desmond who told me.”