'When caprice and impulse take the form of wisdom,' was the answer in a meaning tone, 'Mentor's office of rebuke fails.'
Ethel arched her eyebrows slightly, 'Mentor approves then?'
'Can you doubt it?' in a more serious tone. 'I feel we may still have hopes of you;' then turning to Mildred, with the play of fun still in his eyes, 'Our aside baffles you, Miss Lambert. Miss Trelawny is good enough to style me her Mentor, which means that she has given me a right to laugh at her nonsense and talk sense to her sometimes.'
'You are too bad,' returned Ethel in a low voice; but she was evidently hurt by the raillery, gentle as it was.
'Miss Trelawny forms such extravagant ideals of men and women, that no one but a moral Anak can possibly reach to her standard; the rest of us have to stand tiptoe in the vain effort to raise ourselves.'
'Dr. Heriot, how can you be so absurd?' laughed Mildred.
'It must be very fatiguing to stand on tiptoe all one's life; perhaps we might feel a difficulty of breathing in your rarer atmosphere, Miss Trelawny—fancy one's ideas being always in full dress, from morning to night. When you marry, do you always mean to dish up philosophy with your husband's breakfast?'
The hot colour mounted to Ethel's forehead.
'I give you warning that he will yawn over it sometimes, and refresh himself by talking to his dogs; even Bayard, that peerless knight, sans peur and sans reproche, could be a little sulky at times, you may depend on it!'
'Bayard is not my hero now,' she returned, trying to pluck up a little spirit with which to answer him. 'I have decided lately in favour of Sir Philip Sidney, as my beau-ideal of an English gentleman.'