ng she fancied it might be thought, for he looked so confident.

'Only not what the boys used to call "cocky,"' said Selina. 'He won't be
contemptuous of those he outstrips.'

'His choice of the schoolmaster's profession points to a modesty in him,
does it not, little woman?'

'He made me tell him, while you were writing your letters yesterday, all
about my brother and his prospects.'

'Yes, that is like him. And I must hear of your brother, "little
Collett." Don't forget, Sely, little Collett was our postman.'

The Countess of Ormont's humorous reference to the circumstance passed
with Selina for a sign of a poetic love of the past, and a present
social elevation that allowed her to review it impassively. She admired
the great lady and good friend who could really be interested in
the fortunes of a mere schoolmaster and a merchant's clerk. To her
astonishment, by some agency beyond her fathoming, she found herself,
and hardly for her own pleasure, pushing the young schoolmaster
animatedly to have an account of his aims in the establishment of the
foreign school.

Weyburn smiled. He set a short look at Aminta; and she, conscious of her
detected diplomacy, had an inward shiver, mixed of the fascination
and repugnance felt by a woman who knows that under one man's eyes her
character is naked and anatomized. Her character?--her soul. He held it
in hand and probed it mercifully. She had felt the sweet sting again and
again, and had shrunk from him, and had crawled to him. The love of him
made it all fascination. How did he learn to read at any moment right to
the soul of a woman? Did experience teach him, or sentimental sympathy?
He was too young, he was too manly. It must be because of his being in
heart and mind the brother to the sister with women.

Thames played round them on his pastoral pipes. Bee-note and woodside
blackbird and meadow cow, and the fish of the silver rolling rings,
composed the leap of the music.

She gave her mind to his voice, following whither it went; half was in
air, higher than the swallow's, exalting him.

How is it he is the brother of women? They are sisters for him because
he is neither sentimentalist nor devourer. He will not flatter to feed
on them. The one he chooses, she will know love. There are women who go
through life not knowing love. They are inanimate automatic machines,
who lay them down at last, inquiring wherefore they were caused to move.
She is not of that sad flock