the other?" and horrid pangs smote him to hear her telling musically of
the places she was journeying to, the men she would see, and the chances
of their meeting again before he was married to the heiress Adeline.

"I have yet to learn that I am engaged to her," he said. Mrs. Lovell
gave him a fixed look,--

"She has a half-brother."

He stepped away in a fury.

"Devil!" he muttered, absolutely muttered it, knowing that he fooled and
frowned like a stage-hero in stagey heroics. "You think to hound me into
this brutal stupidity of fighting, do you? Upon my honour," he added in
his natural manner, "I believe she does, though!"

But the look became his companion. It touched and called up great vanity
in his breast, and not till then could he placably confront the look. He
tried a course of reading. Every morning he was down in the library,
looking old in an arm-chair over his book; an intent abstracted figure.

Mrs. Lovell would enter and eye him carelessly; utter little commonplaces
and go forth. The silly words struck on his brain. The book seemed
hollow; sounded hollow as he shut it. This woman breathed of active
striving life. She was a spur to black energies; a plumed glory;
impulsive to chivalry. Everything she said and did held men in scales,
and approved or rejected them.

Intoxication followed this new conception of her. He lost altogether his
right judgement; even the cooler after-thoughts were lost. What sort of