ill, if
you like. Will you bet against it?"

"I won't. I can't nibble at anything. Betting's like drinking."

"But you can take a glass of wine. This sort of bet is much the same.
However, don't; for you would lose."

"There," said Robert; "I've heard of being angry with women for
fickleness, changeableness, and all sorts of other things. She's a lady I
couldn't understand being downright angry with, and here's the reason--it
ain't a matter of reason at all--she fascinates me. I do, I declare,
clean forget Rhoda; I forget the girl, if only I see Mrs. Lovell at a
distance. How's that? I'm not a fool, with nonsensical fancies of any
kind. I know what loving a woman is; and a man in my position might be
ass enough to--all sorts of things. It isn't that; it's fascination. I'm
afraid of her. If she talks to me, I feel something like having gulped a
bottle of wine. Some women you have a respect for; some you like or you
love; some you despise: with her, I just feel I'm intoxicated."

Major Waring eyed him steadily. He said: "I'll unriddle it, if I can, to
your comprehension. She admires you for what you are, and she lets you
see it; I dare say she's not unwilling that you should see it. She has a
worship for bravery: it's a deadly passion with her."

Robert put up a protesting blush of modesty, as became him. "Then why, if
she does me the honour to think anything of me, does she turn against
me?"

"Ah! now you go deeper. She is giving you what assistance she can; at
present: be thankful, if you can be satisfied with her present doings.
Perhaps I'll answer the other question by-and-by. Now we enter London,
and our day is over. How did you like it?"

Robert's imagination rushed back to the downs.

"The race was glorious. I wish we could go at that pace in life; I should
have a certainty of winning. How miserably dull the streets look; and the
people creep along--they creep, and seem to like it. Horseback's my
element."

They drove up to Robert's lodgings, where, since the Winter, he had been
living austerely and recklessly; exiled by his sensitiveness from his two
homes, Warbeach and Wrexby; and seeking over London for Dahlia--a
pensioner on his friend's bounty; and therein had lain the degrading
misery to a man of his composition. Often had he thought of enlisting
again, and getting drafted to a foreign station. Nothing but the
consciousness that he was subsisting on money not his own would have kept
him from his vi