lf-jesting manner, but his ironical voice challenged me.

I felt I detested him, and he should know why.

'I expected to be misunderstood,' I returned coldly, 'but hardly to be
accused of hysterical goodness. To be sure, a girl will do anything
nowadays to get herself talked about!'

'Oh,' in a low voice, 'that rascal! But I will be even with him. How many
more of my speeches did Cunliffe repeat?'

'Oh, I had heard enough,' I replied hastily. 'Does it not strike you as
a little hard, Mr. Hamilton, that one should be judged beforehand in this
harsh manner?--that because some girls are full of vagaries, the whole
sex must be condemned?'

'Oh, if you put it in that cut-and-dried way, I must plead guilty: in
fact, I should owe you some sort of apology, only'--with a stress on the
word--'my speech was not intended for the house-top. I am rather a
sceptic about female missions, Miss Garston, and do not always measure my
words when I am discussing abstract theories with a friend. In my opinion
Cunliffe is the one you ought to blame, though if the speech rankles I
will take my share.'

'I certainly wish you had not said it, Mr. Hamilton.'

'There, now,'--in an injured voice,--'that is the way you treat my
handsome apology, and I am not a man ever to own myself in the wrong,
mind you. What does it matter, may I ask, what I think of girls in the
abstract? I had not met you, Miss Garston, or discussed the subject in
its bearings: so where may the offence lie? Of course you have no answer
ready; of course you have taken offence where none is meant. This is so
like a woman--to undertake to renovate society, and lose her temper at
the first adverse word.'

He was looking at me with a peculiar but not unkindly smile as he spoke;
in fact, his expression was almost pleasant; but I was too much
prejudiced to be softened. I did not care in the least what he thought
of my temper; I was quite sure he had one of his own.

'No one likes to meet discouragement on the threshold,' I answered
curtly.

'Not if it comes out with timbrels and dances, like Jephtha's
daughter, to be sacrificed: that was discouragement on the threshold
with a vengeance. I was always sorry for that old fellow. Well, _apropos_
of that touching remark,--which, by the way, is exquisitely
feminine,--supposing we strike a truce. I daresay you look upon me as an
interfering stranger; but the fact is, I am the poor folk's doctor down
here; so you cannot work withou