THE FIRST WOOER.

Gladys was writing a long letter to her guardian, setting forth in eloquent terms what she wished to do for the working girls of the East End, and asking him for some sympathy and advice, when the housemaid knocked at the door.

'A gentleman for me, Ellen? Yes, I shall be there presently,' she said, without looking at the card on the salver. 'Is Miss Peck in the drawing-room?'

'No, ma'am; she is taking her rest. Shall I tell her?'

'Oh no. Who is it?'

She added another word to her letter, and then read the name on the card. The maid standing by could not help seeing the lovely access of colour in the fair cheek of her mistress, and, as was natural, drew her own conclusions.

Gladys rose at once, and proceeded up-stairs. She did not, as almost every other woman in the circ.u.mstances would have done, go to her own room to inspect her appearance or make any change in her toilet. And, in truth, none was needed. Her plain black serge gown, with its little ruffle at the neck, which would have made a dowdy of almost anybody but herself, was at once a fitting and becoming robe. Her lovely hair, which in the early days had hung in straight heavy plaits over her back, was now wound about her head, and kept in place by a band and knot of black velvet. She moved with the calm mien and serious grace of a woman at ease with herself and all the world. A faint hesitation, however, visited her when she stood without the closed door of the drawing-room.

That curious prevision, which most of us experience at times, that something unusual was in store, robbed her for a moment of her usual self-possession; but, smiling and inwardly chiding herself for her own folly, she opened the door and entered the presence of her lover. She knew him to be such, it was impossible to mistake his demeanour and his att.i.tude towards her. There was the most lover-like eagerness in his look and step as he came towards her, and under his gaze the girl's sweet eyes drooped and her colour deepened.

'This is quite a surprise,' she said gaily. 'Why did you not bring some of the girls with you?'

'I haven't seen them for ages, and Julia has a dance on to-night for which she is saving herself. Besides, perhaps, I wanted to come quite alone.'

'Yes?' she said in a voice faintly interrogatory. 'And you had to walk from the station, too? If you had only wired in the morning, I could have come or sent for you.'

'But, you see, I did not know in the morning I should be here to-day. It is often the unexpected that happens. I came off on the impulse of the moment. Are you glad to see me?'

It was a very direct question; but Gladys had now quite recovered herself, and met it with a calm smile.

'Why, of course; how could I be otherwise? But, I say, you said a moment ago you had not seen any of the girls for ages; it is only forty-eight hours since we met in your aunt's drawing-room.'

'So it is,' he said innocently. 'I had quite forgotten, which shows how time goes with me when you are out of town. Are you really going to bury yourself here all winter?'

'I am going to live here, of course. It is my home, and I don't want any other. A day in Glasgow once a week is quite enough for me.'

'Hard lines for Glasgow,' he said, tugging his moustache, and looking at her with a good deal of real sentiment in his handsome eyes. She was looking so sweet, he felt himself more in love than ever; and there was a certain 'stand-offishness' in her manner which attracted him as much as anything. He had not hitherto found such indifference a quality among the young ladies of his acquaintance.

'I have just been writing to your Uncle Tom, telling him I want to spend a great deal of money,' she began, rather to divert the conversation than from any pressing desire for his opinion, 'and I don't feel at all sure about what he will say. Your aunt does not approve, I know.'

'May I ask how you are going to spend it?' he inquired, with interest.

'Oh yes. I want to inst.i.tute a Club for working girls in Glasgow, and a holiday house for them here.'

'But there are any amount of such things in Glasgow already, and I question if they do any good. I know my mother and Ju are always down on them, and there's truth in what they say, too, that we are making a G.o.d out of the working cla.s.s. It is quite sickening what is done for them, and how ungrateful they are.'

Gladys winced a little, and he perceived that he had spoken rather strongly.

'I know there is a good deal done, but I think sometimes the methods are not quite wise,' she said quietly. 'I am going to run my Club, as the Americans say, on my own lines. You see, I am rather different, for I have been a poor working girl myself, and I know both what they need and what will do them most good.'

'You seem rather proud of the distinction,' he said involuntarily. 'Most women in your position would have made a point of ignoring the past.

That is what half of Glasgow is trying to do all the time--forget where they sprang from. Why are you so different?'

'I do not know.' Her lips curled in a fine scorn. 'As if it mattered,'

she said half-contemptuously,--'as if it mattered what anybody had sprung from. I was reading Burns this morning, and I felt as if I could worship him if for nothing more than writing these lines--

"The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that."'

'That's all very good in theory,' he said a trifle lazily; 'and besides, it is very easy for you to speak like that, with centuries of lineage behind you. I suppose the Grahams are as old as the Eglintons, or the Alexanders, or even the great Portland family itself, if you come to inquire into it. Yes, it is very easy for you to despise rank.'

'I don't despise it, and I am very proud in my own way that I do belong to such an old family; but, all the same, it doesn't really matter.

There is nothing of any real value except honour and high character, and, of course, genius.'

'When you speak like that, Gladys, and look like that, upon my word, you make a fellow afraid to open his mouth before you,' he said quickly, and there was something very winning in the humility and deference with which he uttered these words.

Gladys was not unmoved by them, and had he followed up his slight advantage, he might have won her on the spot; but at the propitious moment Ellen brought in the tea-tray, and the conversation had to drift into a more general groove.

'To return to my project,' said Gladys, when the maid had gone again, 'I have one of my old acquaintances among the working girls here just now.

I expect she will help me a good deal. She was the friend of poor Lizzie Hepburn, whom we have lost so completely. Is it not strange? What do you think _can_ have become of her?'

'I'm sure I couldn't say,' he replied, with all the indifference at his command.

Gladys, busy with the tea-cups, noticed nothing strange in his manner, nor did his answer disappoint her much. She was quite aware that he did not take an absorbing interest in the questions which engrossed so much of her own thought.

'The saddest thing about it is that n.o.body seems to care anything about what has become of her,' she said, as she took the dainty Wedgewood teapot in her hand. 'Just think if the same thing had happened to your sister or either of your cousins, what a thing it would have been.'

'My dear Gladys, the cases are not parallel. Such things happen every day, and n.o.body pays the least attention. And besides, such people do not have the same feelings as us.'

Gladys looked at him indignantly.

'You only say so because you know nothing about them,' she said quickly.

'I do a.s.sure you the poor have quite as keen feelings as the rich, and some things they feel even more, I think. Why, only to-day I had an instance of it in the girl I have staying here. Her loyalty to Liz is quite beautiful. I wish you would not judge so harshly and hastily.'

'I will think anything to please you, Gladys,' said George fervently.

'You must forgive me if I am a trifle sceptical. You see, a fellow has his opinions moulded pretty much by his people, and mine don't take your view of the lower cla.s.ses.'

Again he was unfortunate in his choice of words. Gladys particularly disliked the expression, 'lower cla.s.ses,' and his apologetic tone did not appease her.

'They judge them harshly because they know nothing about them, and never will. One has to live among them, as I have done, to learn their good qualities. It is the only way,' she said rather sadly.

George set down his cup on the tray, and lingered at the table, looking down at her with a glance which might have disconcerted her.

'You are so awfully good, Gladys,' he said, quite humbly for him. 'I wonder you can be half as civil as you are to a reprobate like me.'

'Are you a reprobate?' she asked, with a faint, wondering smile.

'I'm not as good as I should be,' he added frankly. 'But, you see, I've never had anybody put things in the light you put them in. If I had, I believe it would have made all the difference. Won't you take me in hand?'

He threw as much significance as he dared into his last question; but Gladys apparently did not catch his meaning.

'I don't like to hear you speak so,' was the unexpected reply. 'It is like throwing the blame on other people. A man ought to be strong enough to be and to do good on his own account.'

'If you tell me what you would like me to do, I'll do it, upon my word,'