How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs. Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or impolite. What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a coward, a rejector of life's offerings. Well, he had till Sunday. Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber. Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were, to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what satisfied them.