“You’ll be forty-nine sovereigns to the bad,” she said with a pleasant smile as she paid it, “and it’s rather a shady transaction, I suppose. But I’ll make it up to you somehow.” “That’s all right.” Lionel reflected on human nature afterwards, and more particularly on the ways of young women; but it is due to him and to Anne Trevelyan to say that he did not like her any the less for what she had done. On the contrary, he would cheerfully have made a larger sacrifice to see her married to his brother, since that happy result would effectually put an end to his mother’s plans for his future bliss. During the remaining three days of the Trevelyans’ visit, after the house-party had scattered, he already had reason to congratulate himself on his investment. The singular transaction which had taken place in the mess-room had broken the ice between Anne and Jocelyn, and for the first time in their acquaintance they were seen talking together apart from the others. At dinner, too, they exchanged remarks, and judging from what they said the rest of the party might have supposed that their conversation consisted chiefly in making satirical observations on each other’s personal tastes; but now and then, when Jocelyn said something particularly disagreeable, Anne laughed cheerfully, as though she liked it, and when she returned the thrust with interest Jocelyn’s large good-natured mouth twitched a little and then smiled. They acted like a couple of healthy terrier puppies, whose idea of a good game is to bite each other in the back of the neck and catch each other by the hind leg, and then to rush wildly off in opposite directions, only to turn back the next moment and go at each other again, with furious barking and showing of young teeth, which is all a part of the fun. It would be beneath their dignity as fighting dogs not to pretend to fight each other when no sworn enemy is about; but it would be against the laws of puppy honour to do each other any real harm. Lionel saw and understood, and so did quiet little Mrs. Trevelyan; but the Colonel could not make out what was going on, for he was a mild man who had inherited the sentiments of the Victorian age, and only recognised that he was growing old because he felt that his own methods of being agreeable in the eyes of women were antiquated.