Reckage, for his own part,
had loved one lady very well, yet not so madly that he could resign
himself to loving her only, to the exclusion of all others. He walked
along toward Almouth House in a mood of many vexations, cursing the
impudence of Bradwyn and Ullweather, wondering whether he had done
wisely, after all, in engaging himself to the blameless Miss Carillon,
sighing a little over a rumour which had reached him about Sara de
Treverell and the Duke of Marshire, deploring the obstinacy of Robert
Orange where Mrs. Parflete was concerned. He admitted that Mrs. Parflete
was an exceedingly beautiful, young, and, as it happened, rich person.
He owned her delightfulness for a man of Robert's dreamy, romantic,
intense temperament. But marriage between two idealists so highly
strung, and so passionately attached as these two beings were--what
would happen? No doubt they would be able to endure the inevitable
disillusions--(inevitable because Nature is before all things sensual
and has no care for mental prejudices one way or the other)--the
inevitable disillusions of family life. It was scarcely possible that
the devotion of Robert and Mrs. Parflete would not waver or seem less
exquisite under this discipline. Their dream of love would become
unparadised. It would gain a sadness, a melancholy, a note of despair
hard to endure and most difficult to repress. Reckage had no
transcendentalism in his own philosophy: he divided men into two
classes--those who read, and those who could not stand, Dante. He
included himself among the latter with a frankness at once astonishing
and welcome even to numbers who thought him, in most matters, a
hypocrite. The hold of the world was growing daily stronger upon him.
His ambitions were already sullied by many unworthy and deadening ideas.
He dwelt a great deal on the fleetingness of life, and the wisdom of
making the best of its few charming things. Food, and wine, and money,
and fine houses, and amusements were subjects on which he expended a
large amount of silent enthusiasm. But, for all this, he could still
see much to admire--perhaps to envy--in Robert's more spiritual mind,
and he dreaded--as men often do dread in such cases--the effect of a
woman's companionship on so ascetic a character.

"He knows nothing about women--nothing," he told himself. "He has no
experience. He takes them too seriously."

He was, while he admitted his own unreasonableness, a little shocked at
the ver