Erle had already grown very confidential with Fay. In her gentle way she took him to task for his desultory life. Erle owned his faults very frankly; it was quite true, he said, that he had not distinguished himself at the university, and had been chiefly known there as a boating man; but he had been extremely popular in his college. "It is all very well," he grumbled, as he sat in Fay's boudoir that morning, talking to her in his usual idle fashion. "What is a fellow to do with his life; perhaps you can tell me that? Uncle ought to have let me make the grand tour, and then I could have enlarged my mind. Ah, yes! every fellow wants change," as Fay smiled at this; "what does a little salmon-fishing in Norway signify; or a month at the Norfolk Broads?--that is all I had last year. Uncle talks of the Engadine and the Austrian Tyrol next summer, but he travels _en grand seigneur_, and that is such a bore." Erle was perfectly willing to describe his life at Belgrave House to Fay. She was a shrewd little person in her way, and her quaint remarks were very refreshing. He even thought that he would confide in her after a fashion, and hint at a certain difficulty and complication that had come into his life; he was rather desirous of knowing her opinion; but he began in such a roundabout fashion that Fay was quite perplexed. She understood at last that he was talking about two girls, who both seemed to influence him, and for whom he had special liking; but for a long time she could not find out which was the chief favorite. She grew impatient at last in her pretty, imperious way, and put a stop to his unsatisfactory rambling style of talk, by asking him a few downright questions. "You are terribly vague," she said, wrinkling her forehead in a wise way, and folding her little white hands on her lap; they looked absurdly dimpled and babyish in spite of the brilliant diamond and emerald rings that loaded them. "How is a person to understand all that rigmarole? Perhaps I am stupid, but you talk so fast, you silly boy, and now tell me exactly what this Miss Selby is like; I think you said her name was Evelyn." "Oh! I am not good at descriptions," returned Erle, pulling Nero's long glossy ears. "She is an awfully jolly girl, plenty of go in her, lights up well of an evening, and knows exactly what to say to a fellow--keeps him alive, you know; the sort of girl who will dance like a bird half the night, and get up early the next morning and have an hour's canter in the park before breakfast." "Ah," in a mystified tone, "she seems a very active young person; but you have not made me see her; is she tall or short, Erle?" "Well, she is not the tall, scraggy sort, neither is she a diminutive creature, like your ladyship. Miss Selby is medium height, and has a good figure." "Yes, and her face?" demanded Fay, with a baby frown; "you are very bad at description, Erle, very bad indeed."