the younger man, with
an air of profound shrewdness: "she is in love with you."

Ingram rose with some little touch of vexation on his face: "Look here,
Lavender: I am going to talk to you seriously. I wish you wouldn't fancy
that every one is in that condition of simmering love-making you delight
in. You never were in love, I believe--I doubt whether you ever will
be--but you are always fancying yourself in love, and writing very
pretty verses about it, and painting very pretty heads. I like the
verses and the paintings well enough, however they are come by; but
don't mislead yourself into believing that you know anything whatever of
a real and serious passion by having engaged in all sorts of imaginative
and semi-poetical dreams. It is a much more serious thing than that,
mind you, when it comes to a man. And, for Heaven's sake, don't
attribute any of that sort of sentimental make-believe to either Sheila
Mackenzie or myself. We are not romantic folks. We have no imaginative
gifts whatever, but we are very glad, you know, to be attentive and
grateful to those who have. The fact is, I don't think it quite fair--"

"Let us suppose I am lectured enough" said the other, somewhat stiffly.
"I suppose I am as good a judge of the character of a woman as most
other men, although I am no great student, and have no hard and dried
rules of philosophy at my fingers' ends. Perhaps, however, one may learn
more by mixing with other people and going out into the world than by
sitting in a room with a dozen of books, and persuading one's self that
men and women are to be studied in that fashion."

"Go away, you stupid boy, and unpack your portmanteau, and don't quarrel
with me," said Ingram, putting out on the table some things he had
brought for Sheila; "and if you are friendly with Sheila and treat her
like a human being, instead of trying to put a lot of romance and
sentiment about her, she will teach you more than you could learn in a
hundred drawing-rooms in a thousand years."

CHAPTER III.

THERE WAS A KING IN THULE.

He never took that advice. He had already transformed Sheila into a
heroine during the half hour of their stroll from the beach and around
the house. Not that he fell in love with her at first sight, or anything
even approaching to that. He merely made her the central figure of a
little speculative romance, as he had made many another woman before. Of
course, in these little fanciful dramas, written along th