of the man to whom she was engaged. She never had known any other girl who
could do that, and she rather prided herself on the fact that she was not
ridiculous, although she was in the most traditionally absurd position,
that of betrothal. She would like to compare Ronald with the men she had
met lately.

The desire for comparison had increased of late. A fortnight had passed
since she had first met John Harrington, and she had made up her mind. He
was handsome, though his hair was red and he had no beard, and she liked
him; she liked him very much; it was quite different from her liking for
Ronald. She liked Ronald, she said to herself that she loved him dearly,
partly because she expected to marry him, and partly because he was so
good and so much in love with herself. He would take any amount of trouble
for anything she wanted. But John was different. She knew very well that
she was thinking much more of him than he of her, if indeed he thought of
her at all. But she was a little ashamed of it, and in order to justify
herself in her own eyes she was cold and sarcastic in her manner to him,
so that people noticed it, and even John Harrington himself, who never
thought twice whether his acquaintances liked him or disliked him,
remarked one day to Mrs. Wyndham that he feared he had offended Miss
Thorn, as she took such particular pains to treat him differently from
others. On the other hand Joe was always extremely candid to Pocock
Vancouver.

It was on a Monday that John made the aforesaid remark. All Boston was at
Mrs. Wyndham's, excepting all the other ladies who lived in Beacon Street,
and that is a very considerable portion of Boston, as every schoolboy
knows. John was standing near the tea-table talking to Mrs. Sam, when Joe
entered the room and came up to the hostess, who welcomed her warmly. She
nodded coldly to John without shaking hands, and joined a group of young