er force of will out of his mind. Indeed, if it
had not wholly changed his _real_ self, it had encrusted him with that
hardness and roughness of exterior which he turned instinctively to
the world. The same thing had happened to him that happens to most of
us at one time or another. Just as the hunting man, sooner or later,
is pretty sure to be laid up with a broken collar-bone, so in the
career of life must be encountered that inevitable disaster which
results in a wounded spirit and a sore heart. The collar-bone, we all
know, is a six weeks' job; but injuries of a tenderer nature take
far longer to heal. Nevertheless, the cure of these, too, is but a
question of time, though, to carry on the metaphor, I think in
either case the hapless rider loses some of the zest and dash which
distinguished his earlier performances, previous to discomfiture.
"Only a woman's hair," wrote Dean Swift on a certain packet hidden
away in his desk. And thus a very dark page in Lord Bearwarden's
history might have been headed "Only a woman's falsehood." Not much to
make a fuss about, surely; but he was kind, generous, of a peculiarly
trustful disposition, and it punished him very sharply, though he
tried hard to bear his sorrow like a man. It was the usual business.
He had attached himself to a lady of somewhat lower social standing
than his own, of rather questionable antecedents, and whom the world
accepted to a certain extent on sufferance, as it were, and under
protest, yet welcomed her cordially enough, nevertheless. His
relations abused her, his friends warned him against her; of course
he loved her very dearly, all the more that he had to sacrifice many
interests for her sake, and so resolved to make her his wife.

For reasons of her own she stipulated that he should leave his
regiment, and even in this, though he would rather have lost an arm,
he yielded to her wish.

The letter to his colonel, in which he requested permission to send in
his papers, actually lay sealed on the table, when he received a note
in a well-known hand that taught him the new lesson he had never
expected to learn. The writer besought his forgiveness, deploring her
own heartlessness the while, and proceeded to inform him that there
was a Somebody else in the field to whom she was solemnly promised
(just as she had been to him), and with whom she was about to unite
her Lot--capital L. She never could be happy, of course, but it was
her destiny: to fight agai