She made no reply, and he got up and moved restlessly about the room;
then returning he stood looking moodily down upon her.

Some years before, just about the time he was emerging from
knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired,
hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him
in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very
deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park for several weeks with
considerable persistency. Had the disease attacked him in summer it is
quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his
nature was essentially a high-strung and tragic one; but fortunately
he met his beautiful cousin in mid-winter, and 'tis a despairing lover
indeed who breaks the ice. Near as their relationship was, he had not
met her again until the present winter, and then he had found that
years had lent her additional fascination. She was extremely unhappy
in her domestic life, and naturally she gave him her confidence and
awoke that sentiment which is so fatally akin to another and sometimes
more disastrous one.

Dartmouth loved her with that love which a man gives to so many women
before the day comes wherein he recognizes the spurious metal from the
real. It was not, as in its first stage, the mad, unreasoning fancy
of an unfledged boy, but that sentiment, half sympathy, half passion,
which a woman may inspire who is not strong enough to call out the
highest and best that lies hidden in a man's nature. This feeling for
his cousin, if not the supremest that a woman can command, bore
one characteristic which distinguished it from any of his previous
passions. For the first time in his life he had resisted a
temptation--principally because she was his cousin. With the instinct