“It was very sweet of him. But he's in the Church now, and the chaplain of our hospital.” “What a funny little romantic world it is, to be sure!” “Yes; it's like poetry, isn't it?” she answered. Lord Robert came up to introduce Drake to Polly (who was not looking her sweetest), and he claimed Glory for the next dance. “So you knew my friend Drake before?” said Lord Robert. “I knew him when he was a boy,” said Glory. And then he began to sing his friend's praises--how he had taken a brilliant degree at Oxford, and was now private secretary to the Home Secretary, and would go into public life before long; how he could paint and act, and might have made a reputation as a musician; how he went into the best houses, and was a first-rate official; how, in short, he had the promised land before him, and was just on the eve of entering it. “Then I suppose you know he is rich--enormously rich?” said Lord Robert. “Is he?” said Glory, and something great and grand seemed to shimmer a long way off. “Enormously,” said Sir Robert; “and yet a man of the most democratic opinions.” “Really?” said Glory. “Yes,” said Lord Robert; “and all the way down in the hansom he has been trying to show me how impossible it is for him to marry a lady.” “Now why did you tell me that I wonder?” said Glory, and Lord Robert began to fidget with his eye-glass. Drake returned with Polly. He proposed that they should take the air in the quadrangle, and they went off for that purpose, the girls arm-in-arm some paces ahead. “There's a dash of Satan himself in that red-headed girl,” said Lord Robert. “She understands a man before he understands himself.” “She's as natural as Nature,” said Drake. “And what lips--what a mouth!” “Irish, isn't she? Oh, Manx! What's Manx, I wonder?” The night was very warm and close, and there was hardly more air in the courtyard. The sound of the band came to them there, and Glory, who had danced with nearly everybody within, must needs dance by herself without, because the music was more sweet and subdued out there, and dancing in the darkness was like a dream. “Come and sit down on the seat, Glory,” said Polly fretfully; “you are getting on my nerves, dear.” “Glory,” said Drake, “how do the Londoners strike you?” “Much like other mortals,” said Glory; “no better, no worse--only funnier.” The men laughed at that description, and Glory proceeded to give imitations of London manners--the high handshake, the “Ha-ha” of the mumps, the mouthing of the canon, and the mincing of Mr. Golightly. Drake bellowed with delight; Lord Robert drawled out a long owlish laugh; Polly Love said spitefully, “You might give us your friend, the new curate, next, dearest,” and then Glory went down like a shot. “Really,” began Drake, “it's not hospital nursing, you know----”