“I suppose it is; but I have had that formula that I was being educated solely with a view to marrying ‘well,’ and adding extra lustre to the name of Cranstoun dinned into me until I have revolted against it. And I know that after this season, when I am to be taken out and dressed, and inspected by eligible London bachelors, there will be terrible quarrels between my father and me, which will worry and terrify poor mamma beyond measure. You see, Mr. Pritchard,” she said, turning to him with that sweet, frank smile he had already learned to love, “I am indeed talking to you as though I had known you all my life. I dare say it is a good deal what you told me about your leaving England so very shortly which makes me so ready to confide in you. It seems much easier to be frank with a friend whom one may not see again for many years; and then when I heard you tell mamma your people were just yeoman farmers, and that you had nothing in wealth or position to be proud of, I warmed to you at once, and quite longed for a talk with you. The very name of Cranstoun and the expressions ‘old family,’ ‘county family,’ ‘blue blood,’ ‘rank, title, wealth, position, and ancestry,’ somehow produce a feeling of intense annoyance in me. I have been so much trained and preached to, in fact,” she concluded, laughing, “that at heart I have reverted to the savage, and that ideal of my father’s of which he constantly speaks as my vocation in life, to marry some man of brilliant position and fortune, is so detestably repugnant to me that I would far rather kill myself than submit to it.” He listened, deeply interested, but a little puzzled. The romantic novelty of her sentiments amused and attracted him by their dissimilarity from the point of view taken of such subjects by the ordinary young Englishwoman of good education and good family, who is usually quite as anxious as her parents and guardians to make what is called “a good match,” and who only hopes that her future husband may be presentable enough for her to like him. The clew to the mystery of Stella’s character Lord Carthew did not possess. As much as an emotional woman can dread and hate a man and a system, so strongly had Stella’s mother hated and feared Sir Philip Cranstoun and the aristocratic lords of the soil of whom he was a representative, and a very strong measure of the same rebellion, the same hatred, she had transmitted to her daughter. So that it necessarily came about that Stella tried not to think about Hilary Pritchard because she believed him to be Lord Carthew, while her heart and sympathies went readily out to Lord Carthew, whom she believed to be an altogether poor and undistinguished person.