"Well, I believe I _did_ do a good deal in the chocolate-cream
business," says Mr. Gower mildly.

"And she preferred the creams?"

"Oh! much, _much!"_ says Gower.

"So artless of her," says Mrs. Bethune, with a shrug. "I do love the
nineteenth-century child!"

"If you mean Miss Bolton, so do I," says a young man who has been
listening to them, and laughing here and there--a man from the
Cavalry Barracks at Ashbridge. "She's quite out-of-the-way
charming."

Mrs. Bethune looks at him--he is only a boy and easily to be
subdued, and she is glad of the opportunity of giving some little
play to the jealous anger that is raging within her.

"She has a hundred thousand charming ways," says she, smiling, but
very unpleasantly. "An heiress is always charming."

"Oh no! I didn't look at it in that way at all," says the boy,
reddening furiously. "One wouldn't, you know--when looking at
_her."_

"Wouldn't one?" says Mrs. Bethune. She is smiling at him always; but
it is a fixed smile now, and even more bitter. "And yet one might,"
says she.