"All right. I'll send her to you. Now be a good boy, Harry. I'm jealous--for Alec--of the Green Gate." She smiled in her attractive way. "Will there be an absolute rupture between you and your ... cousins, do you think?" "Oh, good heavens, Lady Walmer, no!" said Harry rather irritably. "We shall all be perfect friends, of course ... what impossible things you expect." "I expect only what is certain." She went away. Vanity was as elemental in Harry as in any other good-looking young man. With him, though, it was not a mere useless pursuit--an art-for-art's-sake joy--but invariably calculated and used as a means to an end. He looked in the glass earnestly, then started as Alec came in. He was always surprised and even a little _gene_ each time he saw her, by her immense apparent height. It seemed so much greater than it was because of the somewhat monotonous lines of her figure and her rather bird-like face. Harry watched her, listened to her as she chattered away her hurried, inexpressive unmeaning slang, and looked at him with her bright, small, beadlike eyes. He did not appreciate her. He did not know that behind the jerky manner and inexpressive face there was a Soul. She had not been trained to talk sentiment, and she could not express her ideas; so, though she adored Harry, she only said to her mother in confidence, when in a serious mood, that he was all right; and when in a more playful frame of mind to her girl-friends, that he was a little _bit_ of all right. "Alec," he said, making her sit down in the lowest chair (he could not bear her towering over him), "isn't it a bore that I can't come on the yacht?" "Pretty useless," she answered. He took her hand. "You won't forget me while I'm away, will you, Alec?" "What do _you_ think?" she answered in a trembling voice, and then gave a loud laugh. "I don't think--I don't know." "Oh, shut up!" "Will you be just as nice when I see you again?" continued Harry, in a carefully-modulated voice. "Why do you ask me all this rot?" she said, with another uneasy laugh. "Of course I shall." "Good." Harry couldn't think of anything else to say. Then he remembered.... "When I join you again I'm going to bring you a ring. What's your favourite stone?" "Rubies and diamonds," she answered without a moment's hesitation. "I say, how sporting of you! That'll be ripping!" He tried to feel touched by her artless joy. He knew he was not an ideally ardent suitor. "Well, we'll have a good time later on, eh?" he said in her own tone. "Don't be a silly ass!" replied the girl, her eyes full of tears and tenderness, and her heart of the most sincere joy and affection. Harry laughed. "Tell me, Alec, is your mother a soothing companion? Is she a nice woman to live with?" "Oh! _she's_ all right. A bit off colour sometimes. At least--well, she _is_ all right, if you understand--and yet she's _not_--if you know what I mean."