“I wish you were staying here, too, Giles,” she said. But this was not quite true. She would be sorry to see Giles go; even a little frightened; yet if that sense of excitement were to environ her more closely she would not care to have Giles observing it. “Oh, but I don’t belong here at all,” said Giles, stretching up his arms and locking his hands behind his head, while his eyes still studied her. “And you do.” “Why don’t you belong here?” she asked. But she knew. He was a rook among the doves. “I haven’t done any of the things they do;—or very few of them.” “Neither have I.” “Oh, yes, you have; far more. Anyway, you’re fitted for them and I’m not.” “Do you mean you look down upon them?” “Of course not. But one has only time for so much in one’s life and my line is taken.” “Philosophy and the Banbury Road,” said Alix, rather sadly musing. “Yes; philosophy, though not necessarily the Banbury Road,” said Giles. “And tutoring and being poor. You couldn’t combine those with dances and hunting; even if you had the choice; which I haven’t.” “Lady Mary cares for the things you do, Giles. Books and music, and the country. I believe they all care. I think you would be quite happy with her and Mr. Hamble and Jerry.” “Oh, we’d manage for a week-end now and then, no doubt. He’s a nice boy that Jerry,” Giles added, moving his arms now, putting his hands in his pockets and looking with detachment at the foot crossed on his knee. “Lucky we’re the same size, isn’t it? I shan’t look too much of an ass in his evening things.” “He is very nice, I think,” said Alix. “I do not care much for Joan and Patience Wagstaffe, they seem to me rather _nulle_. But the sailor is nice, too, and Mr. Hamble is so kind. He told me that he would teach me to play billiards. They seem to find that Mr. Fulham very clever, but I would not have him however clever he was. I do not like him. He has a sly face and eats too much. And is Mrs. Hamble nice, Giles?” Thus circuitously Alix approached her object. “She is exceedingly pretty. You had a long talk with her.” “Oh, no, I didn’t.” Giles laughed suddenly. “She wasn’t talking with me—only at me; to see what she’d catch as a rebound.” After all, it was always delightful to get back to Giles. After all, no one understood quite as well as Giles. “What was she trying to catch?” Alix asked. “Oh, just who we were, and what we were doing here, and why in the dickens you weren’t just the quiet little French girl she’d expected. The funny part of it was,” said Giles, smiling broadly as he thought of it, “she didn’t know a bit that I saw what she was after. Silly ass; thinking herself so gracefully concealed and all the time as gross and as glaring as possible. She’s stupid all right,” said Giles. “Though I daresay it makes one stupid to imagine one’s dealing with a negligible noodle. You let her alone, Alix. She’s a cat.” This was very pleasant to Alix.