“If you like,” said Miss Francie, slowly, “I will go to Miss Burgoyne.  She is a woman; she could not but listen.  She cannot want to bring misery on them both.”

“No,” said he, with a little show of authority.  “Whatever we may try—­not that.  I have heard that Miss Burgoyne has a bit of a temper.”

“I am not afraid,” said his companion, simply.

“No, no.  If that were the only way, I should propose to go to Miss Burgoyne myself,” he said.  “But, you see, the awkward thing is that neither you nor I have any right to appeal to her, so long as Linn is willing to fulfil the engagement.  We don’t know her; we could not remonstrate as a friend of her own might.  If we were to interfere on his behalf, she would immediately turn to him; and he is determined not to back out.”

“Then what is to be done, Mr. Mangan?” she exclaimed, in despair.

“I—­I don’t quite see at present,” he answered her.  “I thought I would talk it over with you, Miss Francie.  I thought there might be something in that; that the way might seem clearer.  But I see no way at all, unless you were to go to him yourself.  He would listen to you.  Or he might even listen to me, if I represented to him that you were distressed at the condition of affairs.  At present he doesn’t appear to care what happens to him.”

They had crossed the common; they had come to the foot of the wood; and they did not go on to the highway, for Miss Francie suggested that the sylvan path was the more interesting.  And so they passed in among the trees, making their way through the straggling undergrowth, while the soft March wind blew moist and sweet all around them, and the blackbirds and thrushes filled the world with their silver melody, and in the more distant woods the ringdoves crooned.  Maurice Mangan followed her—­in silence.  Perhaps he was thinking of Lionel; perhaps he was thinking of the confession she had made in crossing the common; at all events, he did not address her; and when she stooped to gather some hyacinths and anemones he merely waited for her.  But as they drew near to the farther end of the coppice the path became clearer, and now he walked by her side.

“Miss Francie,” he said (and it was his eyes that were cast down now), “you were speaking of the ideals that girls in the country may form for themselves—­and girls everywhere, I dare say; but don’t you think it rather hard?”

“What is?”

“Why, that you should raise up an impossible standard, and that poor common human beings, with all their imperfections and disqualifications, are sent to the right about.”

“Oh, no,” Miss Francie said, cheerfully.  “You don’t understand at all.  A girl does not form her ideal out of her own head.  She is not clever enough to do that; or, rather, she is not stupid enough to try to do that.  She takes her ideal from some one she knows—­from the finest type of character she has met; so that it is not an impossible standard, for one person, at least, has attained to it.”