"Well, Jamie, there you are!" she cried, in that hard, metallic voice which to James betrayed so obviously the meanness of her spirit and her self-complacency. "Where on earth have you been?" She stood by the table, straight, uncompromising, self-reliant; by her immaculate virtue, by the strength of her narrow will, she completely domineered the others. She felt herself capable of managing them all, and, in fact, had been giving Uncle William a friendly little lecture upon some action of which she disapproved. Mary had left off her summer things and wore again the plain serge skirt, and because it was rainy, the battered straw hat of the preceding winter. She was using up her old things, and having got all possible wear out of them, intended on the day before her marriage generously to distribute them among the poor. "Is my face very red?" she asked. "There's a lot of wind to-day." To James she had never seemed more unfeminine; that physical repulsion which at first had terrified him now was grown into an ungovernable hate. Everything Mary did irritated and exasperated him; he wondered she did not see the hatred in his eyes as he looked at her, answering her question. "Oh, no," he said to himself, "I would rather shoot myself than marry you!" His dislike was unreasonable, but he could not help it; and the devotion of his parents made him detest her all the more; he could not imagine what they saw in her. With hostile glance he watched her movements as she took off her hat and arranged her hair, grimly drawn back and excessively neat; she fetched her knitting from Mrs. Parsons's work-basket and sat down. All her actions had in them an insufferable air of patronage, and she seemed more than usually pleased with herself. James had an insane desire to hurt her, to ruffle that self-satisfaction; and he wanted to say something that should wound her to the quick. And all the time he laughed and jested as though he were in the highest spirits. "And what were you doing this morning, Mary?" asked Colonel Parsons. "Oh, I biked in to Tunbridge Wells with Mr. Dryland to play golf. He plays a rattling good game." "Did he beat you?" "Well, no," she answered, modestly. "It so happened that I beat him. But he took his thrashing remarkably well--some men get so angry when they're beaten by a girl." "The curate has many virtues," said James. "He was talking about you, Jamie. He said he thought you disliked him; but I told him I was certain you didn't. He's really such a good man, one can't help liking him. He said he'd like to teach you golf." "And is he going to?" "Certainly not. I mean to do that myself." "There are many things you want to teach me, Mary. You'll have your hands full." "Oh, by the way, father told me to remind you and Uncle William that you were shooting with him the day after to-morrow. You're to fetch him at ten." "I hadn't forgotten," replied James. "Uncle William, we shall have to clean our guns to-morrow."