“I do not believe it!” cried Clare, indignantly.

“I should never expect you to do so.  You are too unworldly—­too good; you know nothing of the manners of fashionable people.  Sir Barnard knew it.  They fairly hunted him down; they were always driving over here, or asking Sir Barnard and Miles there; they were continually contriving fresh means to throw Miles and Agatha together.”

I would not please her by showing my anger.

“Perhaps,” I said, carelessly, “Miles admired her; he may even have been her lover.”

She turned to me with a strange, glittering smile, a look I could not fathom on her face.

“No,” she replied:  “Miles knew all about it; he was too sensible to be caught by the insipid charms of a mere school-girl.  Sir Barnard was not so wise; he would have liked to join the two estates—­he spoke of it very often—­but Miles never gave the matter a serious thought.”

There was such unconcealed bitterness in her words and look—­such malice in that glittering smile, I turned away half in disgust.

“All our neighbors understand Lady Thesiger’s politics,” she continued; “they have been a source of great amusement for some time.”

“Miss Thesiger is not a day above eighteen,” I said, fairly angry at last; “so that there can not have been much time for manoeuvring.”

“Ah!” she said, “how I admire you, Sir Edgar.  That simple, noble faith you have in women is most beautiful to me; one sees it so seldom in those who have lived always among fashionable men and women.”

A little speech that was intended to remind me how strange and fresh I was to this upper world.  I began to find something like dislike to mademoiselle growing up in my mind; but I spoke to her of the Thesigers no more.

CHAPTER VII.

It seems an unmanly thing to write of a woman—­my own face flushes hotly as I write the words—­but to make my story plain the truth must be told.  I could not help seeing that Coralie d’Aubergne was growing to like me very much.

To describe how a man woos a woman is a task pleasant enough.  It is natural and beautiful; he is in his place then and she in hers; but who would not shrink from the hateful task of describing how a woman woos a man?

God bless all women, say I!  My life has been a long one, and my experience of them bids me say they are almost all angels.  I have found them true, tender and earnest.  I could tell stories of women’s quiet heroism that would move any one’s heart.  God bless them, one and all—­they are the chief comfort in life!

Still even I, who love and respect them so much, am compelled to own that there are women wanting in purity and goodness, in modesty and reserve.  I grieve to say Coralie d’Aubergne was one of them.  She pursued me, and yet it was all so quietly done that she left me no room to speak—­no ground on which to interfere.