demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that
domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high
hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these
objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have
not seen them for a day or two.

Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first
impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But
the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him
devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that
she was determined not to marry him.

"Then, in that case, you never loved me?"

"I do not love you now."

"You are determined not to marry?"

"On the contrary, I hope to do so."

Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment
that she hoped anything of the kind.

"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth."

"I prefer several others."

Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with
his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his
docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she
had learned it.

"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an
aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his
faults may be, loves you for yourself."

Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as
offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?

Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.

"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of
_hauteur_ which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves
by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has
the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull.

In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram
stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two
rabbits to hurry back into their holes.

Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again.
His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close
at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first
among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that
her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He
should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it
from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she h