Among the little company of persons aware of Jim Stainton's sentimental inclinations, or so far as were concerned the people most intimately affected by those inclinations, there appeared, thus far, to be a singular unanimity of opinion regarding the matter. Stainton, it is to be supposed, approved because the inclinations concurred with his pet theories. Newberry, although he did not know anything about Stainton's pet theories and would in all probability have jeered at them had he been enlightened, proved ready to welcome the miner because he had decided that the miner should relieve the Newberry household of a quiet presence that, its quiescence to the contrary notwithstanding, distinctly disturbed the even course of Newberry's existence. Ethel, as may be readily believed, found, under her husband's expert guidance, no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that, as she put it, "a match of this sort would be for the child's best interests."

To be sure, there was George Holt, if one counted him and his verdict. Still, even in this singularly imperfect world, where we believe in majorities and where they misgovern us, we acknowledge the purging benefits of an ever-present party in opposition; and the party in opposition to James Stainton was now composed of Mr. George Vanvechten Holt. He was a splendid minority of one, but he was not one of those most intimately affected, and he was not generally the sort of individual noticed. Stainton had saved his life, yet even Holt admitted that the life was scarcely worth the saving.

"Not that I care anything about the youngster for her own sake," he would say, night after night, at his club, where he had made all the club-members he knew an exception to his promise of secrecy; "it's not that, and it isn't that my liking for Stainton shuts my eyes to his faults. Not a little bit. Tying up little Muriel to a man half a hundred years old is like sending virgins to that Minotaur-chap and all that sort of thing. And hitching good old Jim to a girl of eighteen is like fastening a scared bulldog to the tail of some new-fangled and unexploded naval-rocket: you don't know what's inside of it and you don't know where it's going to land; all you do know is that it's going to be mighty mystifying to the dog. Still, as I say, I'm not personal. What makes me sore is the principle of the thing. It's so rottenly unprincipled, you know."

Holt, however, always ended by declaring that he would not attempt to interfere. He intimated, darkly, that he could, if he would, interfere with considerable effect, but he was specific, if darker, in his reasons therefor, in his decision not to attempt to save his threatened friends or fight for his outraged principles.

The truth was that George had made one more endeavour after the evening of the opera. He was severely rebuffed. Because, as he never tired of stating, he really liked Stainton and would not forget that the miner had saved his life, he recurred, after much painful plucking-up of courage, to the amatory subject, which only intoxication had permitted him so boldly to pursue on the night previous.

He was seated in Stainton's sitting-room high in the hotel. It was late afternoon; the rumble and clatter of the city rose from the distant street, and Stainton, full of fresh memories of his motor drive with Muriel, was walking backward and forward from his bedroom, slowly getting into evening clothes.

"I sure never would have thought you were morbid," said Holt, from his seat on the edge of a table, whence he dangled his legs.

"Morbid?" repeated Stainton. "I am not."

"I mean—you know: about death and old age and all that sort of thing."

"I thought I had explained all that last night."

"It must have been over when I was with you in the West."

"It wasn't."

"Not when you were the first man to volunteer to go down in the shaft of 'Better Days' mine after the explosion?"

"I have rarely been more afraid than I was then."

"Or when you played head-nurse in the spotted-fever mess at Sunnyside?"

"I was nearly sick—scared sick—myself."

Holt's patent-leather boots flashed in and out of the shadow cast by the table-edge.

"Hum," he said. "It don't seem to show a healthy state of mind, does it?"

Stainton had disappeared into his bedroom. From there his answer came, partly muffled by the half-closed door.

"I don't care to talk any more about it. I made my explanation to you last night, because I had promised to make one. That's all."

"I'm afraid I was a bit illuminated last night," said Holt.

"You were."

"Still, you know, I knew what I was saying."

Stainton did not reply.

"And what I said," Holt supplemented, "is what I think now and what I always will think."

"Very well. Let it go at that, George."

Holt made a mighty effort.

"The plain truth is," said he, "that people will call you an old fool to buy a piece of undressed kid."

Stainton's bulky figure filled the doorway. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his hands busy with the collar-button at the back of his neck.

"That will do," he said.

"I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings——" said Holt.

"Then keep quiet."

"But you ought to know what people will say. Someone's got to tell you."

"I don't care what people will say."

"They'll say——"

Stainton advanced. His hands were now at his side, idle, but his face was completely calm.

"Never mind," he said.

"They'll say," concluded Holt, "that you're buying the little girl, and that you've been cheated in the transaction——"

Stainton's hands were raised. They descended heavily upon Holt's shoulders. They plucked Holt from his perch and shook him until his teeth chattered. Then they dropped him, rather gently, into a chair.

"Now," said Stainton. His face was firm, and there was a cold blue flame playing from under his brows, but he was not even breathing hard. "Now, let this end it. If you want to be my friend, let this end your comments on my personal affairs. If you do not want to be my friend, go on talking as you have been, and I will throw you out of the window."

This incident partially accounts for Holt's resolute refusal thereafter to advise Stainton. Advise him further George certainly did not, although among his club-fellows he expressed himself as extremely anxious to have it remembered that, should anything go wrong with Stainton, George Holt had predicted as much.

There remained, however, one person of importance to Stainton's project that still remained unconsulted and might have some opinion of more or less weight in regard to it. This was Muriel Stannard.

What she thought, or what she would ultimately come to feel about his plan, did occupy space in Stainton's cogitations. Notwithstanding his romanticism, Stainton was not so blind to fact as to fail to see that the girl's mind was as virgin as her body. Indeed, her brain, so far as her education might be said to have developed that organ, was less advanced than the rest of her physique, and this not because she was not intelligent, for now that she was in the world at last he could see her daily hastening toward mental maturity, but because her pastors and masters had brought her up in the manner supposed to be correct for girls of her position. Critics of that manner might say that its directors proceed on the theory that, since life is full of serpents, the best way to train children for life is not to teach them to distinguish between harmless and venomous reptiles, but to keep them in such ignorance of the snakes that they will be sure not to know one when they see it. Yet Stainton, anything rather than a critic of the established order, found himself not displeased with this manifestation—or lack of it. He wanted youth; he wanted his long lost, long postponed romance, and chance had put both these things within his reach in the person of this dusky-eyed girl. Physically she was what her mother had been, mentally she could be trained to complete resemblance. He would make of her what he conceived to be the best. And so he loved her.

To ascertain her opinion, to predetermine it, Stainton was now elaborately preparing. Beginning with that introductory motor ride, in which Stainton's cautious manipulation of the automobile seemed to Muriel's unspoiled delight a union of skill and daring, he went about his courtship in what he believed a frank and regular way; in a way that both Preston and Ethel Newberry considered absolutely committal; in a way that, consider it as she might, Muriel accepted with every evidence of girlish pleasure.

There were more motor drives, with the aunt now playing chaperon: a chaperon that conscientiously chaperoned as little as possible. There were small theatre parties, small suppers, small dinners. One or two mothers of daughters, who dared to be civil to Stainton, were shooed away, attacked by Ethel with all the brazen loyalty of a ponderous hen defending her chicks from the assault of a terrier. The Newberrys, as in duty bound, retaliated upon Stainton's theatres, dinners, and suppers with two teas and a luncheon. Stainton "came back at them," as George Holt phrased it, with more suppers, theatres, and dinners, the dramas always carefully selected to suit the immature condition of Muriel's soul; and so the whole courtship progressed along those conventional lines which lay the road to the altar over a plain of rich foods irrigated by vintage wines.

"Do you like this sort of thing?" Stainton heard himself asking the girl during one of the morning walks that he was permitted to take with her, unescorted, through Central Park.

"What sort of thing?" asked Muriel. "A day like this? I love it!"

It was a day worthy of being loved: one of those crisp autumnal days when New York is at its best and when the air, from the earth to the clear blue zenith, has a crystal clarity and a bracing tang that none other of the world's great cities possesses. Stainton felt as he used on some Rocky Mountain peak with the crests of lower eminences rolling away to the horizon like the waves of an inland sea below him; and Muriel, her cheeks glowing, walked by his side more like some firm-breasted nymph of those forests than a child of modern days and metropolitan civilisation.

"Yes," said Stainton, "this is splendid. But I meant the whole thing: New York, the life here, the city."

"I love that, too," said Muriel.

To Stainton's ear the use of one's first Latin verb translated was not merely schoolgirl carelessness and want of variety of phrase; it was an accurate expression of her abounding capacity for intense affection, her splendid fortune of emotion and her equally splendid generosity in its disposal.

"So do I," he said. "You can't begin to know how much it means to me to get back here."

"From the West?" Her eyes were soft at this. "But the West must be so romantic."

"Scarcely that. It has its points, but romance is not one of them."

"Oh, but your life there was romantic." She nodded wisely. "I know," she said.

Stainton's smile was tenderly indulgent.

"How did you get that idea?" he asked.

"Auntie Ethel has told me some of the brave things you did, and so has Uncle Preston."

"They have been reading some of the silly stories that the papers published when I made my big find. You mustn't believe all that the newspapers say."

"I believe these things," affirmed Muriel. "Wasn't that true about the time you rescued the man from the lynchers at Grand Junction?"

"Grand Joining. I didn't read it," said Stainton.

"But did you do it?"

"Oh, there was something of the sort." He honestly disliked to have his supposedly heroic exploits praised, only from modesty perhaps, perhaps from a super-sensitive consciousness that they were the results rather of fear than of bravery. "Look at that sky. Isn't it glorious?"

"Then about the express robbery on the Rio Grande," said Muriel; "they said you went after the robbers when the sheriff and his men were afraid to go, and you captured them by yourself—three of them."

Stainton laughed, his broad, white teeth showing.

"The sheriff and his men," he said, "were along with me. It was not half so exciting as that play last night. Didn't you like the play?"

"I loved it. But, Mr. Stainton——"

"Yes?"

"Won't you tell me about some of these things?"

"I am sure they are much more interesting in the form in which the newspapers presented them."

"I always wanted to see a mine. Surely a mine must be lovely. Please tell me about a mine."

He tried to tell her, but mining had been to him only a means to an end and, the end now being attained, mining struck him as a dull subject. He abruptly concluded by telling her so.

"Besides," he said, "it is merely a business: a mere business, like any other. What can girls and women care for business?"

So he brought back the conversation to the play that they had seen the night before. He discussed the plot with her, the plot having no relation to business, or to anything else approaching actuality for that matter, his iron-grey eyes all the while eagerly feeding on her beauty and her youth.

"You think," he asked, "that the Duchess should not have tried to break off the match?"

"Just because Arthur was young and poor?" inquired Muriel. "Of course I think she shouldn't. He was far too nice for her daughter anyway."

"But there was the suspicion that he had cheated at cards. Lord Eustace had told her so."

"She didn't really believe that; she only wanted to believe it. I think she was horrid."

"And her daughter, Lady—Lady——" He hesitated for the name.

"Lady Gladys," supplied Muriel. "I think she was horrid, too. To give up Arthur like that!"

Stainton smiled gravely.

"You would not have done it, Miss Stannard?"

"Indeed I would not!"

"What would you have done?"

Muriel's chin became resolute.

"I should have gone right up to him before them all there in the drawing-room, and I should have put my——" She broke off, rosy with embarrassment. "You will think I am awfully silly," she said.

But Stainton did not think so. He urged her on.

"No, you will laugh," said Muriel.

"I should not," he answered her. "I really want to know."

Nevertheless, the illusion of the theatre, which her memory had partially renewed, her self-consciousness finally dispelled, and her conclusion was in lame contrast to her beginning:

"I should just have married him in spite of them all."

Of such material was Stainton's wooing made. Though it may seem but poor stuff to you, it did not seem so to those who wove it, and it was, if you will but reflect upon your own, the material generally in vogue.

Our modern method of courting is, of course, the most artificial phase of modern artificial life. The period of courtship is, for most lovers, what Sunday used to be for the small boy in the orthodox family of the early 'seventies. As he then put on his best clothes for the Sabbath, our men and women now put on their best manners for the courting. As he then put off his real self at church-time, they now lay aside, for this supposedly romantic interlude in an existence presently to return to the acknowledged prosaic, all their crudities. It was thus with Muriel and Stainton.

Not that the latter meant to appear other than he was. His great Plan presumed, indeed, quite the reverse. He was intent that Muriel should admire not his wealth or his reputation, but his inherent worth and the genuine basis for his reputation. He was resolved that she should love not any or all of the things that he might be, but the one thing, the real self, that he had himself made. His fault, according to the prevailing standards, if any fault resulted, consisted only in his insistence upon a too introspectively observed ideal of just what that thing happened to be.

Nor yet, and this is likewise intrinsic, would the severest scrutiny have revealed in Muriel any realisation of a pose upon her own part. Her aunt, trusting as do most guardians of youth to a natural intuition in the ward, which has no standing in fact, refrained from informing the girl in plain language what it was that Stainton wanted. Mrs. Newberry's fears were ungrounded: the conventional calm had not been disturbed, and Muriel, save for timid smiles at the butcher's boy when he called at the school and furtive glances at the acolytes in church, had never yet known love. Not guessing the truth, Muriel was merely, for the first time, being accorded a glimpse of those kingdoms of this world of which all schoolgirls have had their stolen dreams. With what she saw she was frankly delighted, and when a pretty young girl is frankly delighted, a pretty young girl is obviously not at her worst.

"You look very happy nowadays," said Mrs. Newberry at the luncheon-table, looking, however, not at the subject of her remarks but at the master of her affections, who, chancing to be lunching at home, sat opposite her.

"I am, Aunt Ethel," said Muriel. "I always have been happy, but I am happier than ever now."

Mrs. Newberry smiled meaningly at Preston, but Muriel could not see the smile, and Preston would not.

"Why is that?" asked Ethel.

"Oh, because."

"Because why?"

"Because I am seeing so much. The city, you know, and these suppers and things. Sitting up until to-morrow. And I do so love the theatres!"

Ethel's smile faded.

"Yes," she said, "Mr. Stainton is very kind."

"And generous," put in Preston so unexpectedly that his wife jumped. "Thompson; the salmon."

"I think he's lovely," said Muriel.

"Do you?" Mrs. Newberry was bovine even in her playful moods. "He does really run about like a boy, doesn't he?"

"Well," said Muriel, "I wouldn't say just like a boy."

"He seems quite young—he actually seems very young indeed," mused Ethel.

"Seems?" said Preston. "He is."

His positive tone startled Mrs. Newberry into indiscretion.

"He is fif——" she began, then, catching her husband's eye, she corrected herself: "He must be nearly——"

"He is forty," said Newberry, scowling.

"Oh, Uncle Preston," protested Muriel, "Mr. Holt said——"

"George Holt is a fool," said Newberry, "and always was."

"Your uncle is quite right, Muriel," said Ethel. "Mr. Holt does gossip. Besides, he is not the sort of person a young girl should quote."

"You quote him, Aunt Ethel—often."

"Your aunt," said Preston, "is not a young girl. Mr. Stainton is younger than Holt, I dare say, for he has evidently taken good care of himself, and Holt never takes care of anything, least of all his health."

The air of importance that her uncle and aunt seemed to attach to so trivial a matter as a few years more or less in the age of any man past thirty puzzled Muriel, and she betrayed her bewilderment.

"I don't see how it much matters," she said, "whether he's forty or fifty."

"It doesn't matter in the least," said Newberry. "But you had better make the most of him while you can."

"I don't see why," said Muriel.

"Because he is popular," Preston explained. "There are several women—women and girls—anxious to marry him, and one or other of them is sure to succeed."

Muriel winced. She did not relish the thought of losing her new friend, and she wondered why, if he were really sought after in marriage, he had so much time to devote to her and her aunt and uncle, and why he spoke so little of women to her.

Stainton, indeed, held his tongue about his intentions for just the length of time that, as he had previously concluded, a man must hold his tongue in such matters. If, in the meantime, Muriel heard from both of the Newberrys more interesting stories of his career in the West, and was impressed thereby, if she got from the same reliable source equally romantic accounts of his wealth and was, as the best of us could not in like circumstances help being, a little impressed by these as well, she was, nevertheless, honestly unprepared for his final declaration. She regarded Stainton as a storybook hero, the more so since his conversation never approached the sentimental, and she delighted in his company for the "good time"—it was thus that she described it—which he was "showing her."

In brief, she was at last ready to fall in love with Stainton. Stainton was in love.