"They drove up to my door as they might have done to an inn. They asked for rooms and complained of those that were given them. Don't pretend not to know who they are."
"Do you really mean you're afraid of them?"
"I tremble like a leaf. Some monstrous ineluctable fate seems to look at me out of their eyes."
"That's because you secretly admire Maud. How can you help it? She's extremely good-looking, and if you get rid of her mother she'll become a very nice girl."
"It's an odious thing, no doubt, to say about a young person under one's own roof, but I don't think I ever saw any one who happened to be less to my taste," said Guy Firminger. "I don't know why I don't turn them out even now."
Mary persisted in sarcasm. "Perhaps you can make her have a worse time by letting her stay."
"_Please_ don't laugh," her interlocutor repeated. "Such a fact as I have mentioned to you seems to me to speak volumes--to show you what my life is."
"Oh, your life, your life!" Mary Gosselin murmured, with her mocking note.
"Don't you agree that at such a rate it may easily become impossible?"
"Many people would change with you. I don't see what there is for you to do but to bear your cross!"
"Especially from me, do you mean? How do you know I don't bear mine?"
"How do you know that _I_'m not persecuted, that _my_ footsteps are not dogged, that _my_ life isn't a burden?"
They were walking in the old gardens, the proprietor of which, at this, stopped short. "Do you mean by fellows who want to marry you?"
His tone produced on his companion's part an irrepressible peal of hilarity; but she walked on as she exclaimed: "You speak as if there couldn't _be_ such madmen!"
"Of course such a charming girl must be made up to," Guy Firminger conceded as he overtook her.
"I don't speak of it; I keep quiet about it."
"You realise then, at any rate, that it's all horrid when you don't care for them."
"I suffer in silence, because I know there are worse tribulations. It seems to me you ought to remember that," Mary continued. "Your cross is small compared with your crown. You've everything in the world that most people most desire, and I'm bound to say I think your life is made very comfortable for you. If you're oppressed by the quantity of interest and affection you inspire you ought simply to make up your mind to bear up and be cheerful under it."