ted him.

About another small subject they had a quarrel--she was beginning to
order him about, to regard him as her young man, her property--and was
getting accustomed to what had surprised her at first--that he didn't
make love to her. She had ordered him to take her somewhere and he had
refused on the ground that he wanted to stop at home and think!

She let herself go, and when Moona Chivvey lost her temper it was not
easily forgotten. She insulted him, called him a blighter, a silly ass,
a mass of affectation.

He accepted it with gallant irony, bowing with a chivalrous humility
that drove her nearly mad, but he never spoke to her again.

* * * * *

Perhaps nothing less than this violent scene would have shaken Rupert
into examining his own feelings, and with a tremendous rebound he saw
that he was in love with Madeline, and decided to marry her at once. How
delighted the dear child would be!

He had seen very little of her lately, and he appreciated her all the
more.

In her was genuine desire for culture; longing to learn; real refinement
and intelligence, charm and grace, if not exactly beauty. Ah, those
sweet, sincere brown eyes! Rupert would live to see her all she should
be, and there was not the slightest doubt about her happiness with him.
It never occurred to him for a single moment that anyone else could have
been trying to take his place. Far less still that she should have
thought of listening to any other man on earth but himself. When she
came and told him all that had happened, the shock was great. He had
never cared for her so much. But he declined to allow her to break her
engagement; she could not play fast and loose with this unfortunate
young man, Charlie Hillier, and although she declared, with tears, that
she should break it off in any case, and never see him again, Rupert
kept to his resolution, and started for Paris that night.

In answer to one more passionate and pathetic letter from her, he
consented to write to her as a friend in a fortnight, but he said she
must have known her own mind when she accepted Charlie.

Rupert clearly felt that he had been very badly treated; he said he
never would have thought it of her; it was practically treachery.

* * * * *

When he went away he felt very tired, and had had enough, for the
present, at any rate, of all girls and their instruction. Girls were
fools.

He looked forw