“Well,” said Marion, with a certain satisfaction, “you see then, just as I do. We must get ourselves well into what we have, for we never can go back to what we were. And the only way that we can do it is by----” She broke off with a little laugh. “You can find it out for yourself, but you need not put a spoke into another person’s wheel. I am not saying that Eddy Saumarez will be of any consequence in the end. Maybe I will not care to know them after I have been to court. I will not commit myself, you may be sure. I will aye have a way of escape, if I should change my mind. But it was just silly beyond measure to give him a story about Aunty Jane. He will take her off, and make everybody laugh. You can see yourself how he makes fun, and takes everybody off. That is what amuses people, and makes them ask him. He could make it very funny about Aunty Jane. Oh, I know all they say, and I’m getting to understand. If you can tell them stories, and keep them laughing, it’s all they think of. And you to give him the occasion with poor Aunty Jane!” “He had better not let me hear him say a word about Aunty Jane,” said Archie, between his closed teeth. “Oh, he’ll not let you hear him,” said Marion. She was altogether unconscious of the fact that Eddy took herself off with perfect effect, so that even Mrs. Rowland had difficulty in looking severe enough. Archie went to join the party in the smoking-room after this conversation, with more uneasiness than ever. He was not quite clear about his sister’s meaning. Marion was too far-seeing, too full of calculations for her brother. He had himself his own thoughts: but they were of a very different turn from hers. Rosamond Saumarez was to Archie a being of a different species from himself or any one belonging to him. It had not occurred to him that he could appropriate this beautiful lady, and make life more possible by her means. She was still upon her pedestal, a thing apart, a being to be remotely admired, scarcely even as yet worshipped: for in worship itself there is a certain appropriation, and his imagination had not gone so far as that, had not ventured to use any pronoun of possession, even with goddess attached to it. In no way had he imagined that she could ever be his, but always something beyond reach, as superior to him as heaven is to earth. The impression she produced upon him was subduing, rather than exciting. To think that there could be such a distance between him and any other human creature, as there was between him and Rosamond, doubled the mystery and awe of the world on the threshold of which he was standing, to the disturbed and unsatisfied mind of the boy-man, so rudely shaken out of all his old habitudes, so little at home in his new. At no time could Marion’s frank calculations of how she could help herself up the ascent she meant to climb, by grasping a chance hand, this man’s or another’s, as happened to suit her best, have been possible to her brother.