everely, as every manly
nature must suffer when deceived by a woman. He did not blame the
woman--why should he?--but he felt that a calamity had befallen him,
the heaviest of his young experience, and he bore it as best he might.

"_Caelum non animum_" is a very old proverb: his first impulse, no
doubt, was to change the scene, and seek under other skies an altered
frame of mind, in defiance of Horace and his worldly wisdom, so rarely
at fault. In these days a code of behaviour has been established by
society to meet every eventuality of life. When your fortunes are
impaired you winter at Rome; when your liver is affected you travel in
Germany; when your heart is broke you start at once for India. There
is something unspeakably soothing, I imagine, in the swing of an
elephant as he crashes through jungle, beating it out for tigers;
something consolatory to wounded feelings in the grin of a heavy old
tusker, lumbering along, half sulky, half defiant, winking a little
blood-red eye at the pig-sticker, pushing his Arab to speed with a
loose rein ere he delivers the meditated thrust that shall win first
spear. Snipe, too, killed by the despairing lover while standing in a
paddy-field up to his knees in water, with a tropical sun beating on
his head, to be eaten afterwards in military society, not undiluted by
pale ale and brandy-pawnee, afford a relief to the finer feelings of
his nature as delightful as it is unaccountable; while those more
adventurous spirits who, penetrating far into the mountainous regions
of the north-west frontier, persecute the wild sheep or the eland, and
even make acquaintance with the lordly ibex "rocketing" down from crag
to crag, breaking the force and impetus of his leap by alighting on
horns and forehead, would seem to gain in their life of hardship and
adventure an immunity from the "common evil" which lasts them well
into middle age.

Dick Stanmore's first impulse, therefore, was to secure a berth in the
P. and O. steamer at once. Then he reflected that it would not be
a bad plan to stop at Constantinople--one of the Egean islands,
Messina--or, indeed, why go farther than Marseilles? If you come to
that, Paris was the very place for a short visit. A man might spend
a fortnight there pleasantly enough, even in the hot weather, and it
would be a complete change, the eventual result of these deliberations
being a resolve to go down and look after his landed property in the
west of England. I