ur heathen nastiness? Out of the way, sir! Stand off, and never
venture to speak to me again. Well will it be for you if I do not tell
your brother of your infamy."

What happened after this Adrian could never quite remember, but a vision
remained of himself crouching to one side, and of a door flung back so
violently that it threw him against the wall; a vision, too, of a lady
sweeping past him with blazing eyes and lips set in scorn. That was all.

For a while he was crushed, quite crushed; the blow had gone home.
Adrian was not only a fool, he was also the vainest of fools. That
any young woman on whom he chose to smile should actually reject his
advances was bad and unexpected, but that the other man should be
Foy--oh! this was infamous and inexplicable. He was handsomer than Foy,
no one would dream of denying it. He was cleverer and better read, had
he not mastered the contents of every known romance--high-souled works
which Foy bluntly declared were rubbish and refused even to open? Was
he not a poet? But remembering a certain sonnet he did not follow this
comparison. In short, how was it conceivable that a woman looking
upon himself, a very type of the chivalry of Spain, silver-tongued, a
follower--nay, a companion of the Muses, one to whom in every previous
adventure of the heart to love had been to conquer, could still prefer
that broad-faced, painfully commonplace, if worthy, young representative
of the Dutch middle classes, Foy van Goorl?

It never occurred to Adrian to ask himself another question, namely,
how it comes about that eight young women out of ten are endowed with
an intelligence or instinct sufficiently keen to enable them to
discriminate between an empty-headed popinjay of a man, intoxicated
with the fumes of his own vanity, and an honest young fellow of
stable character and sterling worth? Not that Adrian was altogether
empty-headed, for in some ways he was clever; also beneath all this foam
and froth the Dutch strain inherited from his mother had given a certain
ballast and determination to his nature. Thus, when his heart was
thoroughly set upon a thing, he could be very dogged and patient. Now
it _was_ set upon Elsa Brant, he did truly desire to win her above any
other woman, and that he had left a different impression upon her
mind was owing largely to the affected air and grandiloquent style of
language culled from his precious romances which he thought it right to
assume when addressing