't say he isn't a gentleman, now," put in Million again, with a
defiant shake of her little dark head. "That you can't say."

"Well, I don't know. It depends," I said, in a very sermonising voice.
"It all depends upon what you call 'a gentleman.'"

"No, it doesn't," contradicted Miss Million unexpectedly. "You know
yourself it doesn't depend upon 'what you call' anything. Either he is,
or he isn't. That Auntie of yours would ha' told you that. And stuck-up
and stand-offish and a perfect terror as she was, she'd have been the
first to admit that the Honourable Mr. Burke was one of her own sort!"

I couldn't help smiling a little. Million had hit it. This would have
been exactly Aunt Anastasia's attitude!

"And don't you remember what my great wish always was? Whenever there
was a new moon, or anything," Million reminded me, "you used to want
money and nice clothes. But there was something I wanted--quite
different. I wanted to marry a gentleman. I--I still want it!"

Her underlip quivered as she gazed out of the lattice-window at the
peaceful bare Sussex landscape. Her grey eyes were full of tears and of
dreams. As for me, I felt half-sorrowful for her, half-furious with the
Hon. Jim; the person whom nobody but a perfect innocent, like Million,
would dream of liking or taking seriously!... Reprobate! He ought to be
horsewhipped!

I remembered his whimsical horror in that tea-shop when he had exclaimed
to me: "Marry her? Marry a girl with hands like that, or a voice like
that?" Yet he had made "a girl with a voice like that" dreamily in love
with him. Really my heart swelled quite passionately with resentment
against him.

I wondered how far he had been trifling with her honest heart, both
yesterday night at the Thousand and One Club, and this morning at lunch
at the "Refuge." He was quite capable of doing one of two despicable
things. Either of flirting desperately and then riding away; or, of
marrying her in spite of what he had said, and then neglecting
everything about her but her income! Which was he going to do, I
wondered.

"Million! Miss Million," I said hastily. "Do you mind telling me if Mr.
Burke has proposed to you?"

Million looked down, showing the dark half-moons of her eyelashes on her
cheeks in a way that I knew she had copied from one of the "Cellandine
Novelettes" which used to be her favourite reading in Putney. She heaved
a deep sigh. And then she said: "Well! Between you and I, he hasn't
s