what he had to fear. It was in the blood of the
Tristrams, and prudence made no better a resistance than propriety.

XX

THE TRISTRAM WAY--A SPECIMEN

Harry Tristram had led Lady Evenswood to believe that he would inform
himself of his cousin's state of mind, or even open direct communication
with her. He had done nothing to redeem this implied promise, although
the remembrance of it had not passed out of his mind. But he was
disinclined to fulfil it. In the first place, he was much occupied with
the pursuits and interests of his new life; secondly, he saw no way to
approach her in which he would not seem a disagreeable reminder; he
might even be taken for a beggar or at least regarded as a reproachful
suppliant. The splendor, the dramatic effect of his surrender and of the
scene which had led up to it, would be endangered and probably spoilt by
a resumption of intercourse between them. His disappearance had been
magnificent--no other conclusion could explain the satisfaction with
which he looked back on the episode. There was no material yet for a
reappearance equally striking. When he thought about her--which was not
very often just now--it was not to say that he would never meet her
again; he liked her too well, and she was too deeply bound up with the
associations of his life for that; but it was to decide to postpone the
meeting, and to dream perhaps of some progress or turn of events which
should present him with his opportunity, and invest their renewed
acquaintance with an atmosphere as unusual and as stimulating as that in
which their first days together had been spent. Thus thinking of her
only as she affected him, he remained at heart insensible to the aspect
of the case which Lady Evenswood had commended to his notice. Cecily's
possible unhappiness did not come home to him. After all, she had
everything and he nothing--and even he was not insupportably unhappy.
His idea, perhaps, was that Blent and a high position would console most
folk for somebody else's bad luck; men in bad luck themselves will
easily take such a view as that; their intimacy makes a second-hand
acquaintance with sorrow seem a trifling trouble.

Yet he had known his mother well. And he had made his surrender. Well,
only a very observant man can tell what his own moods may be; it is too
much to ask anybody to prophesy another's; and the last thing a man
appreciates is the family peculiarities--unless he happens not to share
the