‘I am a _tradesman_, Margaret, received in certain circles because I have so much money, rejected in others because I have neither the birth nor the breeding of an aristocrat. The same measure you mete to Miss Vere is meted to me--to you also--by those who affect to be our social superiors. What nonsense it all is! What d--d nonsense!’ Margaret Forster shuddered. She had never before in her life heard her brother swear, and his use of even so mild an oath showed the situation to be desperate. She went up to him gently, and put her cheek for his goodnight salute. ‘I think I had better go now,’ she said. ‘We are both tired, and if you are really in earnest, we can talk it over to-morrow. Good-night, James.’ ‘Good-night,’ returned Forster, just touching her cheek with his lips. ‘But don’t go till you have heard me out, I have told you that I love Miss Vere, and that I have proposed to her, but there is something more.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘She has refused me--that is all.’ CHAPTER XXIV.--WHITE BIDS A LAST FAREWELL TO BOHEMIA. All this time Madeline was dwelling with White in a familiar corner of Bohemia--a quarter of the world which is fast disappearing before the brand-new dwellings of artistic gentility--and which, when it finally disappears (as seems inevitable), will take something with it that even respectability can never quite replace. The dwellers in Bohemia, now rapidly disappearing like the dear old quarter itself, had many faults and not a few vices, but these were all forgotten in the presence of natural charm and irresistible _bonhomie_. They wore great beards, drank beer, and smoked great pipes; their clothes were seedy and eccentric, their manners rough and merry, their tastes the very reverse of refined; they had very little money, but that little they freely shared among one another; they loved late hours, wild talk, song-singing, and the social glass; they still regarded the theatre as an educational institution, and talked with pagan enthusiasm of the old gods of the stage. They were neither very clever nor very wise, and they have left no literary monuments to keep their memories fresh; but they enjoyed life, and in their own rough way respected the literary craft to which they belonged. For them Bohemia was a pleasant place.