"I am not worldly," she retorted, in quite an aggrieved tone; "unless, indeed, it is worldly to be sensible, to think of you as well as of myself--to be unselfish and straightforward." "Straightforward! What, do you call it straightforward to let me hang round you as I have done?" "Really, Jack, you are _impayable_ with your hangings round! Can you not find a less objectionable phrase?" She was fencing with him, and he saw it, saw it and resented it with the almost coarse resentment of a nature stronger and yet less obstinate than hers. "Yes, if you like. I'll say you have played fast and loose with me--as you have. You have known for years that I cared for you, and that I intended to marry you. And when a girl allows that sort of thing to go on without a word, and doesn't mean it, I say she is a flirt--a heartless flirt, and I have nothing more to do with her." He turned his horse as he spoke, and without another word rode off, leaving her to go home with the groom. Inexcusable violence, no doubt. Alice told herself so again and again in the vain effort to get rid of a certain surprised remorse, for the girl was emphatically a moral coward, and any display of high-handed resentment, so far from rousing her opposition, invariably made her doubtful of her own wisdom. She hated scenes most cordially, hated, above all things, to have opprobrious epithets hurled at her; for she clung with almost piteous tenacity to her own virtue. It was too hard, too unkind of Jack to blame her, and yet despite this, his condemnation seemed to dim that lodestar of her firmament--common sense. After all, if he liked her, why should they not marry? Why should such devotion be sacrificed to the Moloch of position? In truth, as she thought over the incident, an odd mixture of anger and regret came to upset her usual placidity, so that, much to her own surprise, she broke down helplessly into tears over her mother's conventional inquiry as to how she had enjoyed her ride. Nor could she find any reason for this unwonted emotion, beyond the fact that Jack had been brutal and called her a flirt, and had ridden away, declaring that he would have nothing more to say to her. That such would be the case Mrs. Woodward, as she administered sal volatile and talked about the trying heat, felt was most devoutly to be wished; but a long course of three volume novels warned her of the danger of trusting to the permanence of lovers' quarrels. So after her daughter had been provided with darkness and eau-de-cologne, and a variety of other feminine remedies against the evil effects of emotion, she went off to her own sitting-room to consider the position by the light of her five-and-forty years of human experience. To begin with, the girl's feelings were clearly more deeply implicated than she, or for the matter of that Alice herself, had imagined. The question, therefore, came uppermost whether this fact ought to be