Latimer Burr was evidently a man upon whom rebuff sat lightly. The next morning he came suddenly upon Patience in a dark corner, and tried to kiss her. Whenever the opportunity offered he held her hand, and once, to her infinite disgust, he planted his foot squarely on hers under the dinner table. A few hours later they happened to be alone in one of the small reception-rooms.

“Look here,” exclaimed Patience, wrathfully, “will you let me alone?”

“No, I won’t,” he said good-naturedly. “Jove! but you are a beauty!”

She wore a gown of white mull and lace, trimmed with large knots of dark-blue velvet. She had been talking all the evening with Mr. Peele, Mr. Field, and Burr, and was somewhat excited. Her lips were very pink, her eyes very bright and dark. She held her head with a young triumph in beauty and the intellectual tribute of clever men.

“Hal would be delighted. She has always wanted me to become the fashion.”

“You never will be that, for there are not enough brainy men in society to appreciate you. If all were like myself, you would be wearied with the din of admiration—”

“There’s nothing like having a good opinion of oneself.”

“Why not? I don’t set up to be an intellectual man—intellectual men are out of date; but I’m a brainy man, and I’d like to know how I’m to help being aware of the fact. I certainly don’t claim to be pretty, so you can’t say I’m actually wallowing in conceit.”

Patience was forced to laugh. “Oh, you’d do very well if you’d exercise as much sense in regard to women as you do to affairs. Just answer me one question, will you? Are you so amazingly fascinating that women have the habit of succumbing at the end of the second interview?”

“I never set up to be an ass.”

“But your manner is quite assured. You seem very much surprised that I don’t tumble into your arms and say ‘Thank you.’ Oh, you New York men are so funny!”

“Well, answer me one question—you don’t love your husband, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you like me?”

“I would if you wouldn’t make such an idiot of yourself. You certainly are very agreeable to talk to.”

He came closer, his lids falling. The fine repose of his manner was a trifle ruffled. “Do you love anybody else?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“Then let me love you.”

“I shall not.”

“Then if you don’t love your husband and you like me and will not let me love you, you must have a lover.”

Patience burst into brief hilarity.

“Is that the logic of your kind?”

“A beautiful woman that does not love her husband always loves another man.”

“Or is willing to be loved by the first man that happens to have no other affair on hand.”

“You have said that you like me.”

“I didn’t say I loved you!”

“I’d make you!”

“Oh!” with a deep contempt he was incapable of understanding, “you couldn’t. But tell me another thing; I’m very curious. Has it never occurred to you that a woman must be wooed, that it is somewhat necessary to arouse sentiment and feeling in her before she is willing to advance one step? Why, you and your kind demand her off-hand in a way that is positively funny. What has become of all the old traditions?”

“Oh, bother,” he said. “Life is too short to waste time on old-fashioned nonsense. If a man wants a woman he says so, and if she’s sensible and likes him she meets him half way. Men and women of the world know what they want.”

“That is all there is to love then? It no longer means anything else whatever?”

“Oh—you are all wrong. If you were not a spiritual woman I wouldn’t cross the room to win you. One can buy the other sort. It is your spirituality, your intellectuality, that fascinates me as much as your beauty.”

“What do you know about spirituality?” she said contemptuously. “I don’t like to hear you speak the word. You desecrate it.”

He flushed purple. “There are few things I don’t understand—and a good deal better than you do, perhaps.”

“You have a clever man’s perception, that is all. Association with all sorts of women has taught you the difference between them. But what could you give a spiritual woman? Nothing. You have not a shrunken kernel of soul. The sensual envelope is too thick; your brain too crowded with the thousand and one petty experiences of material life. You are as ingenuous as all fast men, for the women you have spent your life running after make no demands upon subtlety—”

“Take care,” he said angrily; “you are going too far. I tell you I have as much soul as any man living.”

“Perhaps. I doubt if any man has much. Men give women nothing, as far as I can see. If we want companionship there seems nothing to do but to descend to your level and grovel with you.”

“I would never make you grovel. I would reverence—”

“Oh, rot!” she cried, stamping her foot. “What a fool—and worse—the average woman must be. You have no idea how ingenuously you are giving away the women of society. And soul! The idea of a man who pretends to love the woman he is engaged to and is making love to another, and that her sister-in-law and most intimate friend, claiming to have a soul! Have you no sense of humour? I say nothing about honour, as I wish to be understood, if possible; but you are clever enough to see the ridiculous in most things—Please don’t walk over me. There is plenty of room. And the windows are open, you know—”

“Yes, and I am here,” cried a furious voice, and Beverly sprang into the room.

Patience stepped back with a faint exclamation. Burr turned white. Beverly was shaking with rage. His face was almost black; there were white flecks on his nostrils.

“I kept quiet,” he articulated, “to hear every word. You dog!” to Burr. “I may be pretty bad, but I’d never do what you have done. And as for you,” he shook his fist at his wife, “you were only leading him on. If I could only have held myself in another moment I’d have seen you in his arms. Get out of this house,” he roared, “both of you. You’ll never marry my sister. I’m going to tell her this minute—”

Burr sprang forward and caught him by the collar; but Beverly was not a coward. He turned, flinging out his fist, and the two men grappled. Patience closed the door and glanced out of the window. No one was near. Voices floated up from the cliffs. Burr was the more powerful man of the two, and in a moment had flung Beverly, panting, into a chair.

“Keep him here,” said Patience, rapidly, and she left the room.

“Man is certainly still a savage, a brute,” she thought. “What is the matter with civilisation?”

As she crossed the lawn, she met one of the servants.

“Go and find Miss Hal, and ask her to come here,” she said. A few moments later her sister-in-law hurried up from the cliffs.

“What is it?” she called cheerily. “Has Bev had an apoplectic fit?”

“Beverly has been making a greater fool of himself than usual,” said Patience, as the girls met, “and I want to see you before he does. I was standing in one of the reception-rooms talking to Mr. Burr after Mr. Field and Mr. Peele had gone out, and he had on all his manner and was telling me how beautiful I was, in his usual after dinner style, when Beverly leaped through the window like the wronged husband in the melodrama and accused us of making love. He threatened to come and tell you, and he and Mr. Burr wrestled like two prize-fighters. If Beverly were put on the witness stand he’d be obliged to admit that Mr. Burr had not so much as touched my hand. I suppose you will believe me?”

Hal gave her light laugh. “Certainly, my dear, certainly; although if I were a man I should fall in love with you myself. I wouldn’t bet on Latimer, but I would on you—so don’t worry your little head. Do you suppose I expect a man with that mouth and those eyes to be faithful to me? Still, I must say that I should have given him credit for more decency than to make love to my sister-in-law—”

“He didn’t! I swear he didn’t.”

“Oh, of course not! Nor will he make love to every pretty woman he finds himself alone with for five minutes. He can’t help it, poor thing. Let us go and talk to the gentlemen.”

As they entered the little room she exclaimed airily, “Been making a fool of yourself again, Bev? No, don’t speak. Patience has told me all about it. I have every confidence in her and Latimer. Better go and take a spin with Tammany. Latimer, you really must mend your manners. They’re too good. From a distance a stranger would really think you were making love when you are swearing at the heat. Now, come down to the Tea House. Good-night, Bevvy dear.”

And she went off between her lover and her sister-in-law, leaving her brother to swear forth his righteous indignation.

That night Patience opened the door of her husband’s room for the first time. Beverly, who had just entered, was so astonished that the wrath he had carefully nourished fell like quicksilver under a cool wave, and he stared at her without speaking.

“I wish to tell you,” said his wife, “that you were entirely justified in being angry to-night. I could have suppressed Burr by a word, but I chose to lead him on to gratify my curiosity. Hal wishes to marry him, and I am determined that she shall. If I had admitted the truth to her or permitted you to enlighten her, her self-respect would have forced her to break the engagement. That would have been absurd, for the match is exactly what she wants, and she is not marrying with illusions. But you have been treated inconsiderately, and I apologise for my share in it. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course I’ll forgive you,” said Beverly, eagerly. “I wasn’t angry with you, anyhow—only with that scoundrel. But I never believed you’d do this. Do you care for me a little?”

Patience averted her face that she might not see the expression on his. Despite her loathing of him she gave him a certain measure of pity. With all the preponderance of the savage in him and the limitations of his intelligence he had his own capacity for suffering, and to-night he stood before her crushed under the sudden reaction, his eyes full of the dumb appeal of shrinking brutes.

“If we are going to live peacefully don’t let us discuss that subject,” she said gently. “We have both missed it, and I sometimes think that you are more to be pitied than I am. However, I shall not flirt—I promise you that. Good-night.”

That was the last of Mr. Burr’s illegal love-making at Peele Manor. He had had a fright and a lesson, and he forgot neither.