rector's daughter with only a couple of
hundred a year of her own. (And in this explanation I think he was quite
correct.) Then he had begun to think of her himself a good
deal--dramatically, rather than realistically--wondering what it would
feel like to be engaged to her. If a younger son could marry her, surely
a first cousin could--even of the Guiseleys. So it had gone on, little
by little. He had danced with her here at Christmas--just after the
engagement--and had stayed on a week longer than he had intended. He had
come up again at Easter, and again at Whitsuntide, though he always
protested to his friends that there was nothing to do at Merefield in
the summer. And now here he was again, and the thing had happened.

At first, as he sat here, he tried to analyze his attitude to Frank.

He had never approved of Frank altogether; he didn't quite like the
queer kinds of things that Frank did; for Frank's reputation at
Merefield was very much what it was at Cambridge. He did ridiculous and
undignified things. As a small boy, he had fought at least three pitched
battles in the village, and that was not a proper thing for a Guiseley
to do. He liked to go out with the keepers after poachers, and Dick,
very properly, asked himself what keepers were for except to do that
kind of thing for you? There had been a bad row here, too, scarcely
eighteen months ago; it had been something to do with a horse that was
ill-treated, and Frank had cut a very absurd and ridiculous figure,
getting hot and angry, and finally thrashing a groom, or somebody, with
his own hands, and there had been uncomfortable talk about police-courts
and actions for assault. Finally, he had fallen in love with, proposed
to, and become engaged to, Jenny Launton. That was an improper thing for
a younger son to do, anyhow, at his age, and Dick now perceived that the
fact that Jenny was Jenny aggravated the offense a hundredfold. And,
last of all, he had become a Catholic--an act of enthusiasm which seemed
to Dick really vulgar.

Altogether, then, Frank was not a satisfactory person, and it would do
him no harm to have a little real discipline at last....

* * * * *

It was the striking of midnight from the stable clock that woke Dick up
from his deep reverie, and was the occasion of his perceiving that he
had come to no conclusion about anything, except that Frank was an ass,
that Jenny was--well--Jenny, and that he, Dick, w