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“This is a democratic country,” thought Ann; “a country where it is often said that Jack is as good as his master. But is he—in the master’s eyes?” Ann, looking at the two sharply-defined groups during the interval for tea, the group that gathered round the Holmes’s rather shabby car, and that which had for its center the brand new Buick driven by Mrs. Bentley of the Omoana “pub,” answered her own question in the negative. Only one of the polo players was included in Mrs. Bentley’s party—Rodney Marsh.

The upper classes and the lower were as distinctly typified in these two groups, and divided as sharply, as “the gentry” would be in England from those of a less exalted station. But what constituted a claim to “gentility” here? The heritage of gentle birth? Hardly that, for though Holmes and Waring and others were undoubtedly well born, Ralston’s grandfather had been a grocer in a small provincial town in England, while at least two of the wealthiest sheep-farmers now enjoying Vera Holmes’s excellent cakes and sandwiches had sprung from almost illiterate parents.

“A good education, a profession, or the ownership of land,” thought Ann. “But particularly the ownership of land. Perhaps that’s the way in which all aristocracies arise—perhaps there is some virtue in the possession of estates far outweighing the mere ownership of money.” But her spirit rebelled a little against the knowledge that the young man with whom she’d talked quite frankly and happily the day before, was outside the charmed circle of the elect!

She was standing a little apart from the others—waiting near the camp fire for the second billy to boil—when Waring approached her. He put his hand