And she was only
twenty-three!

Eustace Daintree never forgot it.

CHAPTER XXXI.

AN EVENTFUL DRIVE.

Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

Shakespeare, "Henry IV."

I imagine that the most fretting and wearing of all the pains and
penalties which it is the lot of humanity to undergo in this troublesome
and naughty world are those which, by our own folly, our own
shortsightedness, and our own imprudence, we have brought upon ourselves.

There is a degree of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole
armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which
we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than
over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate.

Somebody once has said that most men grieve over the smallest mistake
more bitterly than over the greatest sin. This is decidedly a perversion
of the moral nature; nevertheless, there is a good deal of truth in it.

"If only I had not been such a fool! If I could only have foreseen such
and such results?"

These are more generally the burden of our bitterest self-reproaches.

And this was what Miss Miller was perpetually repeating to herself during
the months of August and September. Beatrice, in these days, was a
thoroughly miserable young woman. She was more utterly separated than
ever from her lover, and that entirely by her own fault. That foolish
escapade of hers to the Temple had been fatal to her; her father, who
had been inclined to become her lover's friend, had now peremptorily
forbidden her ever to mention his name again, and her own lips were
sealed as to the unlucky incident in which she had played so prominent
a part.

Beatrice knew that, in going alone and on the sly to her lover's
chambers, she had undoubtedly compromised her own good name. To confess
to her own folly and imprudence was almost beyond her power, and to clear
her lover's name at the expense of her own was what she felt he himself
would scarcely thank her for.

Mr. Miller had, of course, said something of what he had discovered at
Mr. Pryme's chambers to the wife of his bosom.

"The young man is not fit for her," he had said; "his private life will
not bear investigation. You must tell Beatrice to put him out of her
head."

Mrs. Miller had, of course, been virtuously indignant over Mr. Pryme's
offences, but she had also been triumphantly elated over her own
sagacity.

"Did I not tell you he was not a prop