if he had forgotten himself and uttered
aloud some word all unfit for ladies' ears. The feeling was a novel
one, and, in afterwards recalling it, he could smile rather
contemptuously, If we are enraptured with one particular flower, shall
we necessarily despise another, whose beauty and perfume happen to be
of quite a different kind?

Mr. Enderby appeared, followed by another gentleman. Waymark noticed an
unpleasant heat in the hand held out to him; there was a flush in
Paul's cheeks, too, and his eyes were very bright. He greeted the
visitor with somewhat excessive warmth, then turned and introduced his
companion, by the name of Mr. Rudge.

Waymark observed that this gentleman and his hostess were on terms of
lively intimacy. They talked much throughout the evening.

During the three months that followed, Waymark's intercourse with the
Enderbys was pretty frequent. Mrs. Enderby asked few questions about
him, and Maud was silent after she had explained Waymark's position, so
far as she was acquainted with it, and how she had come to know him. To
both parents, the fact of Maud's friendship was a quite sufficient
guarantee, so possessed were they with a conviction of the
trustworthiness of her judgment, and the moral value of her impulses.
In Waymark's character there was something which women found very
attractive; strength and individuality are perhaps the words that best
express what it was, though these qualities would not in themselves
have sufficed to give him his influence, without a certain gracefulness
of inward homage which manifested itself when he talked with women, a
suggestion, too, of underlying passion which works subtly on a woman's
imagination. There was nothing commonplace in his appearance and
manner; one divined in him a past out of the ordinary range of
experiences, and felt the promise of a future which would, in one way
or another, be remarkable.

The more Waymark saw of Maud Enderby the more completely did he yield
to the fascination of her character. In her presence he enjoyed a
strange calm of spirit. For the first time he knew a woman who by no
word or look or motion could stir in him a cynical thought. Here was
something higher than himself, a nature which he had to confess
transcended the limits of his judgment, a soul with insight possibly
for ever denied to himself. He was often pained by the deference with
which she sought his opinion or counsel; the words in which he replied
to her s