emed better in health, more merry and
full of life, than he had ever seen her: he put all down to his success
with her. He was incapable of suspecting how little of it was owing to
him; incapable of believing how much to the fact that she now turned to
the father of spirits without fear, almost without doubt; thought of
him as the root of every delight of the world--at the heart of the
horse she rode, in the wind that blew joy into hers as she swept
through its yielding bosom; knew him as altogether loving and true, the
father of Jesus Christ, as like him as like could be like--more like
him than any one else in the universe could be like another--like him
as only eternal son can be like eternal father.

It was no wonder that with such a well of living water in her heart she
should be glad--merry even, and ready for anything her horse could do!
Flying across a field in the very wildness of pleasure, her hair
streaming behind her, and her pale face glowing, she would now and then
take a jump Forgue declared he could not face in cold blood: he did not
know how far from cold her blood was! He began to wonder he had been
such a fool as neglect her for--well, never mind!--and to feel
something that was like love, and was indeed admiration. But for the
searing brand of his past, he might have loved her truly--as a man may,
without being the most exalted of mortals; for in love we are beyond
our ordinary selves; the deep thing in us peers up into the human air,
and is of God--therefore cannot live long in the mephitic air of a
selfish and low nature, but sinks again out of sight.

He was not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man
is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous
smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would
please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for
himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf
which he could pass only on the narrow plank of her favour! The more he
was with her, the more he admired her, the more he desired to marry
her; the more satisfied he grew with his own improvement, the more
determined he became that for no poor, unjust scruples would he forgo
his happiness. There was but one trifle to be kept from the world; it
might know everything else about him! and once in possession of the
property, who would dispute the title? Then again he was not certain
that his father had not mer