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"Hasn't he any prospects?"

"None whatever—at least none that are called prospects in our set, though I expect they'd sound pretty fine to anyone else. He'll have Cock Marling when his father dies."

"You shouldn't have fallen in love with a landed proprietor, Jen."

"Oh, well, it's done now and I can't help it."

"You don't sound infatuated."

"I'm not, but I'm in love right enough. It's all the hanging about and uncertainty that makes me sound bored—in self-defence one has to grow a thick skin."

Mary did not speak for a moment but seemed to slip through the firelight into a dream.

"Yes," she said at last "a thick skin or a hard heart. If the average woman's heart could be looked at under a microscope I expect it would be seen to be covered with little spikes and scales and callouses—a regular hard heart. Or perhaps it would be inflamed and tender . . . I believe inflammation is a defence, against disease—or poison. But after all, nothing's much good—the enemy always gets his knife in somehow."