finished his sentence with a puff of smoke from his meerschaum,
as he sat in his bedroom after the ball, into which sanctuary I had
followed him to talk a little before turning in.

"To discuss the Tressillian," said I. "But that surprises me less, old
fellow, than that you should champion her. What's it for? Has hate
turned to the other thing? Have you come to think that, though she'd
make a very bad mother-in-law, she'd make a charming wife? 'Pon my life,
if you have----"

"Hush! Don't jest!"

I knew by the tone of those three little monosyllables that the Major
was done for--caught, conquered, and fettered by his dangerous foe.

Telfer sat silent for some minutes, looking out of the window where the
dawn was rising over the hills, with a settled gloom upon his face. Then
he rose, and began swinging about the room with his firm cavalry tread,
his arms crossed on his chest, and his head bent down.

"By Heaven! Vane," he said at length, in a tone low, but passionate and
bitter, "I have gone on like a baby or a fool, playing with tools till
they have cut me. Against my will, against my judgment, against reason,
hope, everything, I have lingered in that girl's fascinations till I am
bound by them hand and foot. I cannot deceive myself, I cannot shut the
truth out; it was not honor, nor chivalry, nor friendship that made me
to-night insult the man who spoke jestingly of her; it was love--love as
mad, as reckless, as misplaced, as ever cursed a man and drove him to
his ruin." He paused, breathing hard, with his teeth set, then broke out
again: "I, who held love in such disdain, who have so long kept my
passions in such strong control, who thought no woman had the power to
move me against my will--I love at last, despite myself, though I know
that she is pitiless, that nothing I have said has been able to touch
her into softer feeling, and that, mad as my passion is for her, if her
nature be as hard and haughty as I fear, I dare not, if I could, make
her my wife. No, Vane, no," he went on, hastily, as I interrupted. "She
does not love me, she has no gentler feeling in her; I thought she had,
but I was mistaken. I tried her several times, but she will never
forgive my first injustice to her; and to one with so little softness in
her nature I dare not trust my peace. It were a worse hell even than
that I now endure, to have her with me, loving her as I do, and feel
that her cold heart gave no response to mine; to possess