Nevertheless Gathbroke, before the luncheon was half over, felt that he was making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on one of those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive mind, that these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all its harrowing details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a natural gayety and light chaff that had come back for a moment. Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and knew that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the girl, who, he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, was making a desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man. Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris and revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to add a British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's possible torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather despised him for his surrender before battle, or at all events for hauling down his flag publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine satisfaction to the calm smiling dominance, combined with utter devotion, of the man who had won her as easily as she had conquered Richard Gathbroke. That the young Englishman's nature was hot and tempestuous, with depths that even he had not sounded, and her ideal knight's more effective mien but the expression of a possibly meager and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart was a well-trained organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that young Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was far too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge would have affected her had she possessed it. She was in the obstinate phase of first youth, common enough in girls of her sheltered class, where the opportunities to study men and their behavior are few. Having persuaded herself that she was far more romantic than she really was, and that there would be no possible happiness or indeed interest in life after youth, she had conceived as her ideal mate the dominant male, the complete master, and easily persuaded herself that she had found him in Mortimer Dwight.... If she married Gathbroke he would be her slave (so little did she know him.). Dwight would be her master. (So little did she know him, or herself.) CHAPTER XIV I After luncheon, grinning amiably when Mrs. Abbott hinted that Englishmen liked to be out of doors, she led Gathbroke to the confines of the park, where they sat down under one of the oaks that reminded him of England; for which he was in truth desperately homesick, and never more so than at this moment.