Was it the simple rebound from the mortification with which she had seen herself and him turned back to the old vulgar, illiterate circle of the tradespeople of Friarton, which caused Fan to clutch at a straw, and induced her to open her heart to the Stanhopes? ‘Nice!’ growled Oliver. ‘You are a nice sensible young woman to think so. It will be the greatest nuisance going. In the first place, the Stanhopes are not friends of mine—don’t run off with that big blunder at starting. They were once in a reading-party under my charge—a beastly drag they proved, and we nodded and exchanged a word or two in the meadows or on the water from that time. That is the head and tail of our friendship. Nobody but Harry Stanhope would have made a claim upon it.’ ‘But you acknowledged the claim at your own door,’ said Fan, quickly; ‘and are you not gratified by his turning farmer?’ she added, innocently. ‘It is quite in your own way, and I admit that in him it is romantic.’ ‘In my way!’ cried Oliver, losing breath at the injustice of the assertion; ‘in my way to intrude where I am not wanted! And you to welcome romance! You, who boast you are the most matter-of-fact girl, who defend the commonplace ambition to rise in life, to cut trade, to go in for a profession—which requires a smattering of Greek and Latin, or a speaking acquaintance with civil or ecclesiastical law, or with drill and musketry—to wear a wig, or a cassock, or a red coat—the last strictly on parade—without the smallest title to put on either—to dine at seven or eight instead of one o’clock, and look down, with the intense snobbery of a deserter from his ranks, on the class of shopkeepers! You, Fan, who scout any ambition which has a wider scope and a less selfish aim, and call it either high-flown or low-lifed, equally despicable in both lights.’ ‘But Mr. Stanhope is not proposing to be a shopkeeper,’ said Fan, with narrow literalness; ‘and don’t you know a gentleman, a dozen generations deep, can do anything?’ she asserted, defiantly, gathering a cluster of heliotrope and smelling it. ‘It is the first time I ever heard such a sublime dogma from the lips of anybody who fell short of being an idiot or a scamp,’ retorted Oliver. ‘Oh! my dear, dear boy, how can you be so abominably rude?’ said Fan, driven to laugh outright at his vehemence. ‘A gentleman’s birthright must be worth having,’ snorted Oliver, still in towering indignation. ‘It is a pity he does not improve the advantage oftener by doing something which deserves to be chronicled. And if he fails, what can be expected from the _canaille_ who buy and sell?’ ‘Oliver, don’t pretend to misunderstand me,’ remonstrated Fan, relapsing quickly after her short flight into her customary earnestness—even with her proneness to feel aggrieved, getting angry on her own account; ‘you know very well what I mean.’