That season some friends of the Benyons brought their boys to stay at Rainharbour for the holidays, and Beth varied her other pursuits by rambling about with them, Lady Benyon having seen to it that she made their acquaintance legitimately, for the old lady shrewdly suspected that Beth was already beginning to attract attention. From her post of observation in the window she had seen young men turn in the street and look back at the slender girl, in spite of her short petticoats, with more interest than many a maturer figure aroused; and she had heard that Beth Caldwell was already much discussed. Beth's brother Jim, when he came home that summer, also began to introduce her to his young men friends in the neighbourhood, so that very soon Beth had quite a little court about her on the pier when the band played. She liked the boys, and the young men she found an absorbing study; but not one of them touched her heart. Her acquaintance with Alfred had made her fastidious. He had had sense enough to respect her, and his companionship had given her a fine foretaste of the love that is ennobling, the love that makes for high ideals of character and conduct, for fine purpose, spiritual power, and intellectual development, the one kind worth cultivating. In these more sophisticated youths she found nothing soul-sustaining. She philandered with some of them up to the point where comparisons become inevitable, and, so long as they met her in a spirit of frank camaraderie, it was agreeable enough; but when, with their commonplace minds, they presumed to be sentimental, they became intolerable. Still the glow was there in her breast often and often, and would be momentarily directed towards one and another; but the brightness of it only showed the defects in each; and so she remained in love with love alone, and the power of passion in her, thwarted, was transmuted into mental energy.