"That's rather funny," she said, as he concluded "for now you're used to your new position, and it must go more easily, and yet you have less time to see your friends than you did at first." Faraday made more excuses, and wondered that she should take a cruel pleasure in such small teasing. "I thought p'r'aps," she said, still regarding him with an unflinching scrutiny, her face grave and almost hard, "that you'd begun to find us too Western, that the novelty had worn off, that our ways were too--too--what shall I say?--too wild and woolly." A flush of anger ran over Faraday's face. "Your suppositions were neither just nor true," he said, coldly. "Oh, I don't know," she continued, with a careless movement of her head, and speaking in the high, indifferent tone that a woman adopts when she wishes to be exasperating; "you needn't get mad. Lots of Eastern people feel that way. They come out here and see us constantly, and make friends with us, and then go back and laugh at us, and tell their friends what barbarians we are. It's customary, and nothing to be ashamed of." "Do you suppose that I am that sort of an Eastern person?" asked Faraday, quietly. "I don't know," she said, doubtfully. "I didn't think you were at first, but now----" "But now you do. Why?" "Because you don't come here any more," she said, with a little air of triumph. "You're tired of us. The novelty is over and so are the visits." Faraday arose, too bitterly annoyed for speech. Genevieve, rising too, and touching her skirts with arranging hand, continued, apparently unconscious of the storm she was rousing: "And yet it seems odd that you should find such a difference. Lord Hastings, now, who's English, and much more conventional, thinks the people here just as refined and particular as any other Americans." "It's evident," said Faraday, in a voice roughened with anger, "that Lord Hastings's appreciation of the refinement of the Americans is only equaled by your admiration for the talents of the English." "I do like them," said Genevieve, dubiously, shaking her head, as if she was admitting a not entirely creditable taste, and looking away from him. There was a moment's silence. Faraday fastened his eyes upon her in a look of passionate confession that in its powerful pleading drew her own back to his. "You're as honest as you are cruel," he said, almost in a whisper. She made no reply, but turned her head sharply away, as if in sudden embarrassment. Then, in answer to his conventionally murmured good-byes, she looked back, and he saw her face radiant, alight, with the most beautiful smile trembling on the lips. The splendor of this look seemed to him a mute expression of her happiness--of love reciprocated, ambition realized--and in it he read his own doom. He turned blindly round to pick up his hat; the door behind him was opened, and there, handsome, debonair, fresh as a May morning, stood Lord Hastings, hat in hand.