I always had had a tenderness towards Dora Jardine. I suspected that, under certain circumstances, she might not be ill-disposed towards me. It was Sir Haselton that I felt shy of. He had the reputation of being rich, apart from his practice at the bar, and that was supposed to be worth fifteen thousand a year. Dora was pretty; he might very well have eyes for an altogether bigger man than Reginald T. But somehow of late I had begun to fancy that he himself had a partiality for me. He had become quite fatherly. I was in a measure free of the house. On Friday I was to go down to his country place at Cockington to shoot; he had quite made a point of my making an indefinite stay. Now there had been his note of the morning! Sir Haselton was not visible when I arrived. I found Dora alone in the drawing-room. Very nice she looked. Not one of the new order of tall girls, but tall enough, and straight as a dart. Brown hair, which, in certain lights looked golden, and which had a natural crinkle. Pouting lips--very pretty ones--good nose and chin. Her eyes were her most remarkable feature, as was the case with her father. Blue eyes--laughing blue eyes I have heard them called--and innocent and girlish too. But to me they were something else besides. I never knew a man or a woman with eyes like that who was deficient in grit. I will go further. If the women who have gone to the devil, and smiled when they met him face to face, could be polled, I should be disposed to wager that the majority of them had eyes like Dora Jardine's. I am not insinuating anything against her--quite the other way. Only I am a student of women's eyes. She was standing by the fire as I went in. She turned, holding out her hand. "I am glad you have come," she said. I felt as I took her hand in mine--and I felt it not for the first time--that she and I were kindred spirits, and that, girl though she was, she was stronger than I. I said something; I don't know what. Then I looked at the fire. I felt that her eyes were on my face. "What a strange face you have, as though, in you, were the makings of a man." I don't know how she was in the habit of talking to other men; she was always saying that sort of thing to me. I laughed. "What sort of man?" She did not answer my question. She ran her conversation on lines of her own. "What have you been doing since I saw you last--killing time?" "Unfortunately, Miss Jardine, I have nothing else to do." "Would you like to have something?" "That depends." "On what?" "On the something." "I see. I suppose that you will be doing something else on Saturday; you are going to kill papa's pheasants?" "You speak as though that was an improper thing to do." There was a slight movement of her shoulders. "I suppose that some men kill pheasants, and that other men rule empires. I might like to do both things, but I confess that if I had to choose I should prefer the empires."