o an exuberantly incurable idiot. For
what does it amount to when we come to pan it out? If there exist
grounds for the misgiving, why then it is going begging--grovelling for
something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is
it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's
nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either
case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself,
away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object--is he, or
she, worth it?

Now, from a very acute form of this insanity George Falkner was a
chronic sufferer. He had cherished a secret weakness for Lilith, almost
when she was yet in short frocks, but since her return from England,
from the moment he had once more set eyes upon her on the deck of the
_Persian_, he had tumbled madly, uncontrollably, headlong in love. Did a
member of the opposite sex so much as exchange commonplaces with her,
George Falkner's personality would contrive to loom, grim and dark, and
almost threatening, in the background; while such male animal who should
enjoy the pleasure of say an hour of Lilith's society _a deux_, even
with no more flirtatious or ultimate intent than the same period spent
in the society of his grandmother, would inspire in George a fell
murderousness, which was nothing short of a reversion to first
principles. As for Lilith herself, she was fond of him, very, in a
sisterly, cousinly way--and what way, indeed, could be more fatal to
that by which he desired to travel? Nor did it mend matters any that
their mutual relatives were the reverse of favourable to his
aspirations, on the ground of the near relationship existing between the
parties. So, poor George, seeing no light, became morose and
quarrelsome, and wholly and violently unreasonable--in short, a bore.
All of which was a pity, because, this weakness apart, he was, on the
whole, rather a good fellow.

He had come to the Rand, like everybody else, to wait for the
boom--which boom, like the chariots of Israel, though totally unlike the
children of the same, tarried long in coming; indeed, by that time there
were not wanting those who feared that it might not come at all. He had
pleaded with his aunt to invite Lilith at the same time, artfully
putting it that the opportunity of his escort was too good to be missed;
and Mrs. Falkner, with whom he was a prime favourite, although she did
not approve his aspi