premely well-satisfied with what a superior intelligence might have recorded as a cryptic remark but what, to him, was an awfully clever "come-back." He had spent three years at Oxford. No beastly American college for him, by Jove!
Overcoming a cultivated antipathy to haste,—which he considered the lowest form of ignorance,—he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and overtook her midway to the top.
"I say, Miss Emsdale, I saw you come in, don't you know. I couldn't believe my eyes. What the deuce were you doing out with that common—er—chauffeur? D'you mean to say that you are running about with a chap of that sort, and letting him—"
"If you please, Mr. Smith-Parvis!" interrupted Miss Emsdale coldly. "Good night!"
"I don't mean to say you haven't the right to go about with any one you please," he persisted, planting himself in front of her at the top of the steps. "But a common chauffeur— Well, now, 'pon my word. Miss Emsdale, really you might just as well be seen with Peasley down there."
"Peasley is out of the question," said she, affecting a wry little smile, as of self-pity. "He is tooken, as you say in America. He walks out with Bessie, the parlour-maid."
"Walks out? Good Lord, you don't mean to say you'd—but, of course, you're spoofing me. One never knows how to take you English, no matter how long one may have lived in England. But I am serious. You cannot afford to be seen running around nights with fellows of that stripe. Rotten bounders, that's
