For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the fraction of a moment
she hesitated and coloured. "Oh all sorts of things!"

I wondered if this were an imperfect recollection or only a perfect
fib, and she quite understood my unuttered comment on her measure
of such things. But if she could forget Neil Paraday's beauties
she could of course forget my rudeness, and three days later she
invited me, by telegraph, to join the party at Prestidge. This
time she might indeed have had a story about what I had given up to
be near the master. I addressed from that fine residence several
communications to a young lady in London, a young lady whom, I
confess, I quitted with reluctance and whom the reminder of what
she herself could give up was required to make me quit at all. It
adds to the gratitude I owe her on other grounds that she kindly
allows me to transcribe from my letters a few of the passages in
which that hateful sojourn is candidly commemorated.



CHAPTER IX.



"I suppose I ought to enjoy the joke of what's going on here," I
wrote, "but somehow it doesn't amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary
possesses me and cynicism deeply engages. I positively feel my own
flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness.
The house is full of people who like him, as they mention, awfully,
and with whom his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious
success. I delight in his nonsense myself; why is it therefore