verywhere. He has lectured----"

It was pathetic, her eagerness to vindicate his intellect, to record
his achievements, to convince Durant that she was proud of him, not
to let him see.

For the rest of the way she was silent, the light died out of her
eyes with every turning, and by the time they had reached Coton
Manor Miss Tancred was herself again.

At whist that evening nobody was pleased. The Colonel looked sulky
and offended, possibly at Durant's disaffection; Durant was moodier
than ever, and even Mrs. Fazakerly seemed depressed. Miss Tancred
remained imperturbable and indifferent, she won every trick without
turning a hair, but when it was all over she left the table
abruptly. She was visibly distressed. Mrs. Fazakerly gazed after her
with an affectionate stare. She turned to Durant.

"For goodness' sake," she whispered, "say something nice to her."

For the life of him Durant could think of nothing nice to say,
beyond congratulating her on her success in the accursed game.

Mrs. Fazakerly chimed in, "With or without a partner Miss Tancred
wins!"

"I always win. So, I imagine, does Mr. Durant."

"And why should I always win?"

"You? You win because you care nothing about the game."

V

If you had told Durant that the end of his first week would find him
sitting under the firs in lonely conversation with Miss Tancred, he
would have smiled at you incredulously. Yet so it was. Her fear of
him, if fear it had been, and not indifference, was wearing away.
She seemed anxious to make friends with him if possible in a less
painfully conscientious manner, and he, on his side, was beginning
to tolerate her. In fact, he went so far as to own that, if it had
not been for that ridiculous idea of his, he would have tolerated
her from the first. It was not her fault if he had been fool enough
to fall in love with her before sight or at half-sight. She had
disappointed him (hence his natural disgust); but the thing had
happened many times before in his experience. After all, he had had
no grounds for his passionate belief in Miss Tancred beyond the
argument from defect, the vague feeling that Destiny owed him amends
for her intolerable shortcomings. But Durant's mind was too sane and
versatile to be long concerned with passion yet unborn. He was not
one of those pitiable sentimentalists who imagine that every
petticoat, or at any rate every well-cut skirt, conceals a probable
ideal. Some women of his acquainta