Then, seeing the young man's discomfiture, her admirable good-nature returned. "Croquet, for instance," she added. "I hear you are a great player. Ah! there is Lord Alston. No doubt he will make our fourth." Maud, it is true, had spent the hours since lunch in flying before her admirer, but her reasons, it must be confessed, were not those which one would be disposed to think natural on the part of a young girl. There was not, in fact, one atom of shyness or shirking about her; she had not the least objection to hear impassioned speeches or blunt declarations, whichever mode Anthony should choose to adopt, nor did the thought of him in any way fill her with horror. She had listened very attentively to her mother's advice when they drove down to Windsor earlier in the week; she had also listened with the same consideration to Lady Ardingly's far more convincing and sensible remarks when she had lunched with her on Friday, and her only reason for refusing Anthony an opportunity all the afternoon was that she really had not the slightest idea whether she should say yes or no. She did not, as she had told her mother, love him; she did not, either, dislike him. He was merely quite indifferent to her, as, indeed, all men were. Men, in fact, as far as she thought about them at all, seemed to her to be unattractive people; she could not conceive what a girl should want with one permanently in the house. They were for ever either putting tobacco or brandy into their mouths or letting inane remarks out, and they stared at her in an uncomfortable and incomprehensible manner. On the other hand, she knew perfectly well that it was the natural thing for girls to marry; every one always did it, and they were probably right. She supposed that she also would ultimately marry, but was this--this utter absence of any emotion--the correct thing? She was aware that tremblings and raptures were in the world of printed things supposed to be the orthodox signals flown by the parties engaged; she should be a creature of averted eyes and deep blushes. But she did not feel the least inclined to either; there was nothing in Anthony that would make her wish to avert her eyes, nor, as far as she knew, did he ever say things which would make her blush. He was simply indifferent to her, but so, for that matter, were all men. Was she, then, to be a spinster? That was equally unthinkable.