suspected by his friends.

Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law firm
to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and treated
him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with amusement.
For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd corners of
the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his pleasure to
study the laws by which men ruled other men in every condition of life,
and under every sun. The regulations of a new mining camp were fraught
with as great interest to him as the accumulated precedents of the
English Constitution, and he had investigated the rulings of the mixed
courts of Egypt and of the government of the little Dutch republic near
the Cape with as keen an effort to comprehend, as he had shown in
studying the laws of the American colonies and of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.

But he was not always serious, and it sometimes happened that after he
had arrived at some queer little island where the native prince and the
English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the
intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing
occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of an
elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many forms
of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken the
trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and his
articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they told of
the divorce laws of Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in Cambodia,
or the habits of the Mexican lion.

Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss
Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell. She was the most
beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only
was he certain.

Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to
matrimony. He was among his own particular friends, the men before whom
he could speak seriously or foolishly without fear of being
misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives who painted pictures,
and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and Weimer
who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all bachelors,
and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little circle from
the intrusion of either men or women.

"Of course the chief objecti