She settled herself more comfortably as she spoke, turning towards him with one arm resting on the back of the bench, and her head leaning against the upturned hand. The sun shone on her face through the flickering branches. No, she was not pretty; not in the least the sort of girl Stanor was accustomed to fancy. Yet there was something extraordinarily attractive about the little face, with its clear eyes, its wide, generous mouth, its vivacity of expression. Already, after a bare ten minutes' acquaintance, Stephen Glynn so shrank from the prospect of hurting Pixie O'Shaughnessy that it required an effort to keep an unflinching front. "I agree with your people," he said resolutely, "that you and Stanor are too young, and that this matter has been settled too hastily. Apart from that, I should object to any engagement until he has proved his ability to work for a wife. I have a position in view for him in a large mercantile house in New York. After a couple of years' experience there he would come back to the London house, and, if his work justified it, I am prepared to buy him a partnership in the firm. He would then be his own master, free to do as he chose, but for these two years he must be free, with no other responsibility than this work." "You think," queried Pixie slowly, "that I should interfere ... that he would do his work better without me?" "It's not a question of thinking, Miss O'Shaughnessy. I am not content to think. I want to make _sure_ that Stanor will settle seriously to work and keep in the same mind. He is a good fellow, a dear fellow, but, hitherto at least, he has not been stable." "He has never been engaged before?" "Not actually. I have been forewarned in time to prevent matters reaching that length. Twice over--" A small hand waved imperiously for silence. "I don't _think_," said Pixie sternly, "that you have any right to tell me things like that. If Stanor wants me to know, he can tell me himself. It's his affair. I am not at all curious." She drew a fluttering breath, and stared down at the ground, and a silence followed during which Stephen was denouncing himself as a hard-hearted tyrant, when suddenly a minute voice spoke in his ear-- "Were they--_pretty_?" It was impossible to resist the smile which twitched at his lips. Unpleasant as was the nature of his errand, he, the most unsmiling of men, had already twice over been moved to merriment. Stephen was reflecting on the incongruity of the fact, when Pixie again answered his unspoken retort. "It's not curiosity, it's interest. _Quite_ a different thing! And even if they _were_, it's much more serious when a man cares for a girl for her--er--mental attractions, because they go on getting better, instead of fading away like a pretty face. It's very difficult to know what is right. ... I've promised Stanor, and he has promised me, and it seems a poor way of showing that you know your own mind, to break your word at the beginning!"