tions with any woman
except his wife. For her sake he had kept all others at a distance in a
strange jealousy of his own heart which had made her for him the only
woman in the world. Then, too, he had hated, for her, the curiosity of
those who had evidently wished to know her story. That had been always a
secret. He had told it to his father, and his father had died with it.
No one else had ever known whence Maria had come, nor what her name had
been. If Captain Crowdie had ever guessed the truth, which was doubtful,
he had held his tongue.

But Angus Dalrymple was no longer the man he had been in those days. He
had changed very much in the past two or three years; for though he had
almost outlived the excesses into which he had fallen in his first
sorrow, his hardy constitution had been shaken, if not weakened, by
them. Physically his nerves were almost as good as ever, but morally he
was not the same man. He felt the need of sympathy and confidence, which
with such natures is the first sign of breaking down, and of the
degeneration of pride.

That was probably the secret of what he felt when he was with Francesca.
She had that rarest quality in women, too, which commands men without
inspiring love. It is very hard to explain what that quality is, but
most men who have lived much and seen much have met with it at least
once in their lives.

There is a sort of manifested goodness for which the average man of the
world has a profound and unreasonable contempt. And there is another
sort which most wholly commands the respect of that man who has lived
hardest. From a religious point of view, both may be equally real and
conducive to salvation. The cynic, the worn out man of the world, the
man whose heart is broken, all look upon the one as a weakness and the
other as a strength. Perhaps there is more humanity in the one than in
the other. A hundred women may rebuke a man for something he has done,
and he will smile at the reproach, though he may smile sadly. The one
will say to him the same words, and he will be gravely silent and will
feel that she is right and will like her the better for it ever
afterwards. And she is not, as a rule, the woman whom such men would
love.

"I have never before met a woman whom I should wish to have for my
friend," said Lord Redin, one day when he was alone with Francesca. "I
daresay I am not at all the kind of man you would select for purposes of
friendship," he added, with a short la