ned suddenly off, that the new comer had
recognized him as well. This was tormenting for the moment, as he went
on perplexing himself by trying to think who it was that he had seen in
this unexpected and unwished-for way. He walked slowly, and looked back
once or twice. He could not see his disturber any more. The man had
either gone away or was, perhaps, standing in the shadow of a doorway.
Suddenly an idea flashed upon Heron.

"Why, of course," he exclaimed, "it's he! I ought to have known! It's
the man from Keeton--the hated rival."

By "hated rival," however, Heron did not mean a rival in love, but only
in electioneering; for he now knew that it was Mr. Sheppard he had
seen, and he remembered how Mr. Sheppard, when he met him in Minola's
room, had seemed oddly sullen and unwilling to fraternize. This was the
reason why Heron called him the hated rival. His own idea of a rival in
an election contest was that of a person whom one ought to ask to
dinner, and treat with especial courtesy and fair offer of friendship.

Suddenly, however, another idea had occurred to him.

"What on earth can he be doing there," he asked, "under her window? Can
it be possible that he too is a lover?"

He too? Who then was _the_ lover--the other lover? Heron did not
believe, and would not admit, that Blanchet was a genuine lover at all.
The whole theory of Victor's duty to watch under Minola's windows was
based on the assumption that Blanchet was no true lover, but a cunning
hunter of fortune. Why then ask, was Mr. Sheppard too a lover? Heron
did not at the moment stop to ask himself any such question, but after
awhile the absurdity of his words occurred to him, and he was a little
amused and a good deal ashamed of his odd and hasty way of putting the
question.

"Why shouldn't he be there as well as I?" he said. "Why should he be a
lover any more than I?"

Then he began to assure himself that the hated rival must have been
there only by chance; and it is doubtful whether if he had thought much
longer over the question he would not have ended by convincing himself
that nothing but the merest chance had brought him, too, under Minola's
window panes.

It was, indeed, Minola's window under which he had been watching; and
she too was watching, and never dreamed that he was so near. She looked
from her window not long after he had gone, and saw the street all
lonely, and felt lonely herself, and shuddered, thinking that life
would ever