oozing from the temple, trickling slowly through the sand. Then Lords
Muchross and Snowdown passed, and they passed without acknowledging
him!

"Cads, cads, damn them!" His face changed expression. "I may rise to
any height, queens may fall down and worship me, but I may never undo
my birth. Not to have been born a gentleman! That is to say, of a
long line--a family with a history. Not to be able to whisper, 'I may
lose everything, all troubles may be mine, but the fact remains that
I was born a gentleman!' Those two men who cut me are lords. What a
delight in one's life to have a name all to one's self!" And then
Mike lost himself in a maze of little dreams. A gleam of mail;
escutcheons and castles; a hawk flew from fingers fair; a lady
clasped her hands when the lances shivered in the tourney; and Mike
was the hero that persisted in the course of this shifting little
dream.

The Brookes--Sally and Maggie--stopped to speak to him, and he went
to lunch with them. His interest in all they did and said was
unbounded, and that he might not be able to reproach himself with
waste of time, he contrived by hint and allusion to lay the
foundation for a future intrigue with one of the girls.

Lily Young, however, had never been forgotten; she had been as
constantly present in his mind as this sense of the sunshine and his
own happy condition. She had been parcel of and one with these but
now; as he drove to see her, he separated her from the morning
phenomena of his life, and began to think definitely of her.

Smiling, he called himself a brute, and regretted his failure. But in