"Forgive me," he said, almost humbly, "if I have believed what I have so often been told, but if there is one person about whom I am sensitive, it is my mother. I will not detain you any longer, Miss Bolitho. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not spoken to you at all. Do not think that I complain because you are fighting against me. You can do no other--besides, I am sure"--and here he spoke bitterly--"that your father and the Wilsons will have poisoned your mind against me!" He saw an angry flash from her eyes. "I am afraid you are wrong there, Mr. Stepaside, as far as I know there have been no reasons why I should think of you at all; as for enmity, such a thing would be impossible!" His heart seemed like a great hot fire as he left her. He knew he had broken all conventions, and acted like a madman; he knew that whatever she had felt towards him before, her feelings towards him now must be of utter scorn and derision, and yet he would not recall one word he had spoken, even if he could. He was glad that he had said these wild, incoherent things to her. He had spoken to her, she had spoken to him. In the future she would think of him, not as a nonentity, not as someone who could be easily passed by, but as one whose life meant something. She would never be able to forget him. He knew it and rejoiced in it! She would be reminded of him by a thousand things in the days to come. She would never be indifferent about him again, and throughout the whole of the contest that was coming on she would regard him differently from the way in which she had thought of him before. Somehow, too, he felt less jealous of Ned Wilson. He had not spoken of this man, who was said to be his rival, but he was in the background of his thoughts all the time. For weeks the stories which the gossips had bandied had wounded him, but now he felt different. After their talk this girl would never think of Ned Wilson; she could not. He did not belong to her order of beings. He breathed a different atmosphere, he spoke a different language, lived in a different world. The next day Paul started for Scotland, to try and discover the truth concerning which his mother had told him. CHAPTER VI PAUL GOES TO SCOTLAND