love with! And yet she had never even seen Ernest only ten days
ago! Lady Hilda! What a grand name, to be sure, and what a grand
person she must be. And then Ernest himself belonged by birth to
the same class! For in poor little Edie's mind, innocent as she was
of the nice distinctions of the peerage, Lady So-and-So was Lady
So-and-So still, whoever she might be, from the wife of a premier
marquis to the wife of the latest created knight bachelor. To
her, Lady Hilda Tregellis and Lady Le Breton were both 'ladies of
title'; and the difference between their positions, which seemed
so immense to Ernest, seemed nothing at all to the merry little
country girl who sat sketching beside him. After all, how could
she ever have even vaguely fancied that such a young man as Ernest,
in spite of all his socialistic whims, would ever dream of caring
for a girl of the people like her? No doubt he would go to the
Exmoors', fall naturally in love with Lady Hilda, and marry decorously
in what Edie considered his own proper sphere of life! She went
on with the finishing touches of her little picture in silence, and
folded it up into the tiny portfolio at last with a half-uttered
sigh. So her poor wee castle in the air was knocked down before
she had begun to build it up in any real seriousness, and she turned
to join Harry in the boat almost without speaking.

'I hope you'll get the Pembroke fellowship,' she said again, a
little later, as they rowed onward down the river to Nuneham. 'But
in any case, Mr. Le Breton, you mustn't forget you've half promised
to come and look us up at Calcombe Pomeroy in the Christmas vacation.'

Ernest smiled, and nodded acquiescence.

Meanwhile, on that same Thursday afternoon, Arthur Berkeley had