maidens from the gentle families of St. Renny and the neighbourhood.

Ishmael was dancing opposite Hilaria Eliot, and his enjoyment of it lay
in knowing that Killigrew, who had basely tried to trip him up shortly
before, was suffering pangs of envy. After some four years of knowing
her, Killigrew was suddenly in love with Miss Eliot and didn't mind who
knew it. In fact, to be accurate, Killigrew's emotion was chiefly based
on a desire to be different from the rest of his world, and what was
the good of being different unless people knew it?

Thus Killigrew--to Ishmael, who was growing vaguely aware of a
difference from his fellows that he could not remedy, the argument would
have had no force. Killigrew was neither of those St. Rennyites who
despised girls, nor of those who held the cult of the doctor's daughter,
that dizzy exemplar of fashion, nor of those others--a small band these
latter, made up of the best boys in the school, little and big--who
admired and liked Hilaria as a "good sort." Killigrew was determined to
be different, and so, like Burns, "battered" himself into love. If
Ishmael had been disposed to feel a tender sentiment for her himself, he
could not have cherished it with any comfort, being already cast by
Killigrew for the confidant of passion. Thus it came about that, though
in after years those stolen meetings between Hilaria and a ring of boys
would flash into his memory as being romance in essence, at the time
they held no more thrill for him than might be imparted by some new
novel--contraband in the perpetual war against grown-ups--that she would
bring to read aloud to them in some hollow of the moor. Always it was
from the angle of the third person--that most comfortable of
view-points--that he saw her. Only later by the light that lingered
round her ways did he know how she had stood for beauty.