It almost depended upon Gwendoline Pomphrey whether this speech should constitute an offer of marriage. A pretty lackadaisical droop of the head; a softly-murmured, "Oh, Roland, I cannot bear to hear you talk like this; I cannot bear to think such qualities as yours can be so utterly wasted;" any sentimental, womanly little speech, however stereotyped; and the thing would have been done. But Lady Gwendoline was a great deal too proud to practise any of those feminine arts affected by manoeuvring mothers. She might jilt a commoner for the chance of winning a marquis; but even that she would only do in a grand off-hand way befitting a daughter of the house of Ruysdale. She looked at her cousin now with something like contempt in the curve of her thin upper lip. She loved this man perhaps as well as the Doctor's Wife loved him, or it may be even with a deeper and more enduring love; but she was of his world, and could see his faults and shortcomings as plainly as he saw them himself. "I am very sorry you have sunk so low as this, Roland," she said, gravely. "I fancy it would be much better for you if you employed your life half as well as other men, your inferiors in talent, employ their lives. You were never meant to become a cynical dawdler in a country house. If I were a man, a fortnight in the hunting season would exhaust the pleasures of Midlandshire for me; I would be up and doing amongst my compeers." She looked, not at Roland, but across the flower-beds in the garden as she spoke, with an eager yearning gaze in her blue eyes. Her beauty, a little sharp of outline for a woman, would have well become a young reformer, enthusiastic and untiring in a noble cause. There are these mistakes sometimes--these _mesalliances_ of clay and spirit. A bright ambitious young creature, with the soul of a Pitt, sits at home and works sham roses in Berlin wool; while her booby brother is thrust out into the world to fight the mighty battle. The cousins sat together for some time, talking of all manner of things. It was a kind of relief to Roland to talk to some one--to some one who was not likely to lecture him, or to pry into the secrets of his heart. He did not know how very plainly those secrets were read by Gwendoline Pomphrey. He did not know that he had aroused a scornful kind of anger in that proud heart by his love for Isabel Gilbert. "Have you seen anything of your friends lately-that Graybridge surgeon and his wife, whom we met one day last summer at Mordred?" Lady Gwendoline asked by-and-by, with supreme carelessness. She had no intention of letting Roland go away with his wound unprobed. "No; I have seen very little of them," Mr. Lansdell answered. He was not startled by Lady Gwendoline's question: he was perpetually thinking of Isabel, and felt no surprise at any allusion made to her by other people. "I have not seen Mr. Gilbert since I returned to England."