Her sweet, rich voice absolutely thrilled, while her quiet self-possession sent a pang through him, as he felt how young, how awkward, and wanting in confidence he must seem in her eyes, which met his with a frank, friendly look that was endorsed during conversation, as she easily and pleasantly helped him out of two or three verbal bogs into which he had floundered. After a walk through the garden, they had entered the house, where Mrs Luttrell had turned suddenly upon her visitor, to confuse him again by her sudden appeal. "Did you ever see such a straw hat as that, Mr Bayle?" "Oh, it's an old favourite of papa's, Mr Bayle," interrupted Millicent, turning to smile at the elderly gentleman taking the dilapidated straw from his head to hang it upon one particular peg. "He would not enjoy the gardening so much without that." The tall handsome man left at the end of a few minutes. Business was his excuse. He had met the ladies, and just walked down with them, he told the doctor. "But you'll come in to-night, Mr Hallam? We shall expect you," said Mrs Luttrell warmly. "Oh, of course!" said Millicent, as Mr Hallam, from the bank, involuntarily turned to her; and her manner was warm but not conscious. "I shall be here," he said quietly; and after a quiet friendly leave-taking, Christie Bayle felt relieved, and as if he could be a little more at his ease. It was not a success though, and when he in turn rose to go, thinking dolefully about his dirty boots as compared with the speckless Wellingtons of the other visitor, and after feeling something like a throb of pleasure at being warmly pressed to step in without ceremony that evening, he walked to his apartments in the main street, irritated and wroth with himself, and more dissatisfied than he had ever before felt in his life. "I wish I had not come," he said to himself. "I'm too young, and what's worse, I _feel_ so horribly young. That supercilious Mr Hallam was laughing at me; the old lady treated me as if I were a boy; and Miss Luttrell--" He stopped thinking, for her tall graceful presence seemed before him, and he felt again the touch of her cool, soft, white hand. "Yes; she talked to me as if I were a boy, whom she wanted to cure of being shy. I am a boy, and it's my own fault for not mixing more with men." "Bah! What an idiot I was! I might have known it was not the gardener. He did not talk like a servant, but I blundered into the idea, and went on blindfold in my belief. What a ridiculous _debut_ I made there, to be sure, where I wanted to make a good impression! How can I profess to teach people like that when they treat me as if I were a boy? I can never show my face there again."