she is clever enough to
see that you did not mean to be disrespectful. But she will expect you
to alter that a great deal if you ask her to marry you; that is, until
you are married."

"Have I ever been overbearing to you, Sheila?" he asked.

"To me? Oh no. You have always been very gentle to me; but I know how
that is. When you first knew me I was almost a child, and you treated
me like a child; and ever since then it has always been the same.
But to others--yes, you are too unceremonious; and Mrs. Lorraine will
expect you to be much more mild and amiable, and you must let her have
opinions of her own."

"Sheila, you give me to understand that I am a bear," he said in tones
of injured protest.

Sheila laughed: "Have I told you the truth at last? It was no matter
so long as you had ordinary acquaintances to deal with. But now, if
you wish to marry that pretty lady, you must be much more gentle if
you are discussing anything with her; and if she says anything that
is not very wise, you must not say bluntly that it is foolish, but you
must smooth it away, and put her right gently, and then she will be
grateful to you. But if you say to her, 'Oh, that is nonsense!' as
you might say to a man, you will hurt her very much. The man would not
care--he would think you were stupid to have a different opinion from
him; but a woman fears she is not as clever as the man she is talking
to, and likes his good opinion; and if he says something careless
like that, she is sensitive to it, and it wounds her. To-night you
contradicted Mrs. Lorraine about the _h_ in those Italian words, and
I am quite sure you were wrong. She knows Italian much better than you
do, and yet she yielded to you very prettily."

"Go on, Sheila, go on," he said with a resigned air. "What else did I
do?"

"Oh, a great many rude things. You should not have contradicted Mrs.
Kavanagh about the color of an amethyst."

"But why? You know she was wrong; and she said herself a minute
afterward that she was thinking of a sapphire."

"But you ought not to contradict a person older than yourself," said
Sheila sententiously.

"Goodness gracious me! Because one person is born in one year, and one
in another, is that any reason why you should say that an amethyst
is blue? Mr. Mackenzie, come and talk to this girl. She is trying to
pervert my principles. She says that in talking to a woman you have to
abandon all hope of being accurate, and that respect for the tr