on red-hot iron; even
then he tried to obey her bidding, and it was hardly his fault if he
failed.

Christopher Thornley was one of those people whose temperament and
surroundings are at war with each other. Such people are not few in this
world, though they themselves are frequently quite unaware of the fact;
nevertheless, there is always an element of tragedy in their lot. By
nature he was romantic and passionate and chivalrous, endowed with an
enthusiastic admiration for beauty and an ardent longing for all forms
of joyousness; and he had been trained in a school of thought where all
merely human joys and attractions are counted as unimportant if not
sinful, and where wisdom and righteousness are held to be the two only
ends of life. Perhaps in a former existence--or in the person of some
remote ancestor--Christopher had been a knightly and devoted cavalier,
ready to lay down his life for Church and king, and in the meantime
spending his days in writing odes to his mistress's eyebrow; and now he
had been born into a strict Puritan atmosphere, where principles rather
than persons commanded men's loyalty, and where romance was held to be a
temptation of the flesh if not a snare of the devil. He possessed a
great capacity for happiness, and for enjoyment of all kinds;
consequently the dull routine of business was more distasteful to him
than to a man of coarser fibre and less fastidious tastes. Christopher
was one of the people who are specially fitted by nature to appreciate
to the full all the refinements and accessories of wealth and culture;
therefore his position at the Osierfield was more trying to him than it
would have been to nine men out of every ten.

When spring came back again, Alan Tremaine came with it to the Moat
House; and at the same time Felicia Herbert arrived on a visit to the
Willows. Alan had enough of the woman in his nature to decide
that--Elisabeth not being meant for him--Elisabeth was not worth the
having; but, although she had not filled his life so completely as to
make it unendurable without her, she had occupied his thoughts
sufficiently to make feminine society and sympathy thenceforth a
necessity of his being. So it came to pass that when he met Felicia and
saw that she was fair, he straightway elected her to the office which
Elisabeth had created and then declined to fill; and because human
nature--and especially young human nature--is stronger even than early
training or old associa