"Then, in that case, you never loved me?"

"I do not love you now."

"You are determined not to marry?"

"On the contrary, I hope to do so."

Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment that she hoped anything of the kind.

"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth."

"I prefer several others."

Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she had learned it.

"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his faults may be, loves you for yourself."

Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?

Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.

"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of hauteur which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull.

In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two rabbits to hurry back into their holes.

Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again. His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen. It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions from him and to bid her good-bye.

"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's No," which at the last moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how, after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other's arms." Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were.

"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other and to our—former attachment."

"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she would lose him.

"Good-bye."

"You understand it is for always?"