ter a while Hallin found himself
half-inclined to Mr. Boyce's view, that men of Raeburn's type are never
seen to advantage in this stage--this queer topsy-turvy stage--of first
passion. He felt a certain impatience, a certain jealousy for his
friend's dignity. It seemed to him too, every now and then, that
she--the girl--was teased by all this absorption, this deference. He was
conscious of watching for something in her that did not appear; and a
first prescience of things anxious or untoward stirred in his quick
sense.

"You may all say what you like," said Marcella, suddenly, putting down
her cup, and letting her hand drop for emphasis on her knee; "but you
will never persuade me that game-preserving doesn't make life in the
country much more difficult, and the difference between classes much
wider and bitterer, than they need be."

The remark cut across some rattling talk of Frank Leven's, who was in
the first flush of the sportsman's ardour, and, though by no means
without parts, could at the present moment apply his mind to little else
than killing of one kind or another, unless it were to the chances of
keeping his odious cousin out of Parliament.

Leven stared. Miss Boyce's speech seemed to him to have no sort of _a
propos_. Aldous looked down upon her as he stood beside her, smiling.

"I wish you didn't trouble yourself so much about it," he said.

"How can I help it?" she answered quickly; and then flushed, like one
who has drawn attention indiscreetly to their own personal situation.

"Trouble herself!" echoed young Leven. "Now, look here Miss Boyce, will
you come for a walk with me? I'll convince you, as I convinced those
fellows over there. I know I could, and you won't give me the chance;
it's too bad."

"Oh, you!" she said, with a little shrug; "what do you know about it?
One might as well consult a gambler about gambling when he is in the
middle of his first rush of luck. I have ten times more right to an
opinion than you have. I can keep my head cool, and notice a hundred
things that _you_ would never see. I come fresh into your country life,
and the first thing that strikes me is that the whole machinery of law
and order seems to exist for nothing in the world but to protect your
pheasants! There are policemen--to catch poachers; there are
magistrates--to try them. To judge from the newspapers, at least, they
have nothing else to do. And if _you_ follow your sporting instincts,
you are a very fi