en the rejected one was forced to smile bitterly at so inapposite a
parallel.

Though Mrs Westray senior poured out the vials of her wrath on
Anastasia for having refused to become Mrs Westray junior, she was at
heart devoutly glad at the turn events had taken. At heart Westray
could not have said whether he was glad or sorry. He told himself that
he was deeply in love with Anastasia, and that this love was further
ennobled by a chivalrous desire to shield her from evil; but he could
not altogether forget that the unfortunate event had at least saved him
from the unconventionality of marrying his landlady's niece. He told
himself that his grief was sincere and profound, but it was possible
that chagrin and wounded pride were after all his predominant feelings.
There were other reflections which he thrust aside as indecorous at this
acute stage of the tragedy, but which, nevertheless, were able to
exercise a mildly consoling influence in the background. He would be
spared the anxieties of early and impecunious marriage, his professional
career would not be weighted by family cares, the whole world was once
more open before him, and the slate clean. These were considerations
which could not prudently be overlooked, though it would be unseemly to
emphasise them too strongly when the poignancy of regret should dominate
every other feeling.

He wrote to Sir George Farquhar, and obtained ten days' leave of absence
on the score of indisposition; and he wrote to Miss Euphemia Joliffe to
tell her that he intended to seek other rooms. From the first he had
decided that this latter step was inevitable. He could not bear the
daily renewal of regret, the daily opening of the wound that would be
caused by the sight of Anastasia, or by such chance intercourse with her
as further residence at Bellevue Lodge must entail. There is no need to
speculate whether his decision was influenced in part by a concession to
humiliated pride; men do not take pleasure in revisiting the scenes of a
disastrous rout, and it must be admitted that the possibility of
summoning a lost love to his presence when he rang for boiling water,
had in it something of the grotesque. He had no difficulty in finding
other lodgings by correspondence, and he spared himself the necessity of
returning at all to his former abode by writing to ask Clerk Janaway to
move his belongings.

One morning, a month later, Miss Joliffe sat in that room which had been
occu