equal to the event; but he did not go so often, and he went rather
oftener to the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret Vance, except
on the society terms. With much sneering and scorning, he fulfilled the
duties to Mrs. Horn without which he knew he should be dropped from her
list; but one might go to many of her Thursdays without getting many
words with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted many; the girl
kept the charm of her innocent stylishness; but latterly she wanted to
talk more about social questions than about the psychical problems that
young people usually debate so personally. Son of the working-people as
he was, Beaton had never cared anything about such matters; he did not
know about them or wish to know; he was perhaps too near them. Besides,
there was an embarrassment, at least on her part, concerning the
Dryfooses. She was too high-minded to blame him for having tempted her to
her failure with them by his talk about them; but she was conscious of
avoiding them in her talk. She had decided not to renew the effort she
had made in the spring; because she could not do them good as
fellow-creatures needing food and warmth and work, and she would not try
to befriend them socially; she had a horror of any such futile
sentimentality. She would have liked to account to Beaton in this way for
a course which she suspected he must have heard their comments upon, but
she did not quite know how to do it; she could not be sure how much or
how little he cared for them. Some tentative approaches which she made
toward explanation were met with such eager disclaim of personal interest
that she knew less than before what to think; and she turned the talk
from the sisters to the brother, whom it seemed she still continued to
meet in their common work among the poor.

"He seems very different," she ventured.

"Oh, quite," said Beaton. "He's the kind of person that you might suppose