en appear to be capable of that sort of thing. But it strikes a
mere man as playing rather low down on a luckless devil who has done
her no harm: and I don't envy him his hasty bargain, or the repenting
at leisure that's bound to follow. Lord, what fools we men are! And
how easily we lose our heads over a woman! All except you--the Great
Invulnerable, looking down upon our folly from the superior height of a
snow-peak. . . ."

Lenox read no further. The last words enraged him, like a blow between
the eyes, and set the blood hammering in his temples. It would seem,
at times, that Fate selects with fiendish nicety the psychological
moment when her arrows will strike deepest, and stick fastest. Thus,
when his thirst was at its height, Lenox found the cup dashed from his
lips; and that by the hand of his best friend:--a master-stroke of
Olympian comedy.

With a curse he flung the letter on to the table.

Wounded love, wounded pride, and baulked desire so clashed in him that
clear thought was impossible. He only knew that he had been
deliberately deceived, the most intolerable knowledge to a man
incapable of deceit: and with the knowledge all the natural savage in
him sprang to life. If Richardson had appeared before him in the
flesh, it is doubtful whether he could have stayed his hand: the more
so, since he believed that the man had written the truth: that this
girl--whom it seemed that he had wooed with quite unnecessary
reverence--had taken the best he could give, and utilised it as a mere
salve for her wounded vanity.

He understood now why her heart had proved more difficult of access
than her hand. He had believed it unawakened; had dreamed, as lovers
will, of warming it into life with the fire of his own great love: and
lo, he found himself forestalled by this execrable man in England.
Clearly he had been a fool;--an infatuated fool! He stabbed himself
with the epithet: and a vivid memory of his uncle's stock cynicisms
turned the knife in the wound. All the prejudices and tenets of his
youth rushed back upon him now: an avenging host, mocking at his
discomfiture; narrowing his judgment; blinding him to the woman's point
of view.

And while he still stood battling with himself in a vain effort to
regain his shaken self-control, the bedroom door opened, and his wife
came quickly towards him.

His changed aspect arrested her: and the sight of her facing him thus,
with the sunlight in her eyes and on