tance of conviction is
not mine; your mode of reasoning and my own have nothing in common. We
inhabit different worlds.'

Beatrice let her eyes turn slowly to his face. The smile with which he
met her found no reflection on her countenance; her look was that of one
who realises a fatality.

'Shall we join them?' she asked in a moment, nodding towards the far-off
carriage which was about to hide itself among trees.

Wilfrid mused instead of answering. She began to ride on.

'Stay one minute,' he said. 'I have been anything but courteous in my
way of speaking to you, but it was better to put off idle forms, was it
not?'

'Yes; I shall know henceforth what you think of me.'

'Not from this one conversation, if you mean that.'

'Well, it does not matter.'

'Perhaps not. Difference of opinion has fortunately little to do with
old-standing kindness.'

'I am not sure that you are right, at all events when it has expressed
itself in words of contempt.'

It was not resentment that her voice conveyed, but some thing which
Wilfrid found it harder to bear. Her drooped eyelids and subdued tone
indicated a humble pride, which the protest of her beauty made pathetic.

'We will never speak of such things again,' he said gently. 'Let me have
your forgiveness. When we join them down there, they will laugh at us
and say we have been quarrelling as usual; in future I think we mustn't
quarrel, we are both of us getting too old for the amusement. When you
sing to us to-night, I shall remember how foolish I was even to pretend
contempt.'

'You will be thinking,' she said, 'that I am a mere amateur.'

'If I do, I shall be an ungrateful wretch--and an insensible one, to
boot.'

She rode down the hill without replying.

CHAPTER III

LYRICAL

Miss Hood did not, of course, dine with the family. Though, as Mrs.
Rossall said, it was a distinct advantage to have in the house a
governess whom one could in many respects treat as an equal, yet there
was naturally a limit, in this as in all other matters. We have not yet,
either in fact or in sentiment, quite outgrown the social stage in which
personal hiring sets on the hired a stigma of servitude. Mrs. Rossall
was not unaware that, in all that concerned intellectual refinement, her
governess was considerably superior to herself, and in personal
refinement not less a lady; but the fact of quarterly payments, spite of
all this, inevitably indicated a place below the salt. M