"Tell me your age, Alice," he implored.
"I am twenty at Christmas time," said the girl, amazed at the question.
"And I am seventeen or very nearly that. Men sometimes marry women older than themselves, and I don't see why I shouldn't. Oh, Alice, promise that you will marry me. I never met a girl I liked so much, and I am sure we should be happy."
"I am sure we should," said the girl, laughing. "You silly boy! what put such nonsense in your head? I am far too old for you, and though I like you very much, I don't in the least want to marry you." She seemed to herself to have got out of a sober world into a sort of Mad Tea-party, where people behaved like pantaloons and spoke in conundrums.
The boy flushed and his eyes grew cross. "Is it somebody else?" he asked; at which the girl, with a memory of Mr. Stocks, reflected on the dreadful monotony of men's ways.
A solution flashed upon his brain. "Are you going to marry Lewie Haystoun?" he cried in a more cheerful voice. After all, Lewis was his cousin, and a worthy rival.
Alice grew hotly uncomfortable. "I am not going to marry Mr. Lewis Haystoun, and I am not going to talk to you any more." And she turned round with a flaming face to the cool depths of the wood.
"Then it is that fellow Stocks. Oh, Lord!" groaned Arthur, irritated into bad manners. "You can't mean it, Alice. He's not fit to black your boots."
Some foolish impulse roused the girl to reply. She defended the very man against whom all the evening she had been unreasonably bitter. "You have no right to abuse him. He is your people's guest and a very distinguished man, and you are only a foolish boy."
He paled below his sunburn. Now he believed the truth of the horrid suspicion which had been fastening on his mind. "But--but," he stammered, "the chap isn't a gentleman, you know."
The words quickened her vexation. A gentleman! The cant word, the fetish of this ring of idle aristocrats--she knew the hollowness of the whole farce. The democrat in her made her walk off with erect head and bright eyes, leaving a penitent boy behind; while all the time a sick, longing heart drove her to the edge of tears.
The days dragged slowly for the girl. The brightness had gone out of the wide, airy landscape, and the warm August days seemed chill. She hated herself for the wrong impression she had left on the boy Arthur's mind, but she was too proud to seek to erase it; she could but trust to his honour for silence. If Lewis heard--the thought was too terrible to face! He would resign himself to the inevitable; she knew the temper of the man. Good form was his divinity, and never by word or look would he attempt to win another man's betrothed. She must see him and learn the truth: but he came no more to Glenavelin, and Etterick was a far cry for a girl's fancy. Besides, the Twelfth had come and the noise of guns on every hill spoke of other interests for the party at Etterick. Lewis had forgotten his misfortunes, she told herself, and in the easy way of the half-hearted found in bodily fatigue a drug for a mind but little in need of it.