ding of his advances and full-front speeches, had never
given him enough encouragement to warrant his playing young Lochinvar in
Park Lane; and his cup became full when, at the close of the season, she
was whisked off to the seclusion of a country-seat, whose walls to him
were impregnable. His defeat was then, and afterwards, complete. He
pluckily replied to the derision of his relatives with multiplied
derision, demanded his inheritance, got his traps together, bought a fur
coat, and straightway sailed the wintry seas to Canada.

His experiences had not soured his temper. He believed that every dog
has his day, and that Fate was very malicious; that it brought down the
proud, and rewarded the patient; that it took up its abode in marble
halls, and was the mocker at the feast. All this had reference, of
course, to the time when he should--rich as any nabob--return to London,
and be victorious over his enemy in Park Lane. It was singular that he
believed this thing would occur; but he did. He had not yet made his
fortune, but he had been successful in the game of buying and selling
lands, and luck seemed to dog his path. He was fearless, and he had a
keen eye for all the points of every game--every game but love.

Yet he was born to succeed in that game too. For though his theory was,
that everything should be treated with impertinence before you could
get a proper view of it, he was markedly respectful to people. Few
could resist him; his impudence of ideas was so pleasantly mixed with
delicately suggested admiration of those to whom he talked. It was
impossible that John Malbrouck and his wife could have received him
other than they did; his was the eloquent, conquering spirit.

II.

By the time he reached Lake Marigold he had shaken off all those
hovering fancies of the woods, which, after all, might only have been
the whisperings of those friendly and far-seeing spirits who liked
the lad as he journeyed through their lonely pleasure-grounds. John
Malbrouck greeted him with quiet cordiality, and Mrs. Malbrouck smiled
upon him with a different smile from that with which she had speeded him
a month before; there was in it a new light of knowledge, and Gregory
could not understand it. It struck him as singular that the lady should
be dressed in finer garments than she wore when he last saw her; though
certainly her purple became her. She wore it as if born to it; and with
an air more sedately courteous than he had