own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their
youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously
than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of
water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so
pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it,
watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped
its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never
leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and
shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired
of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country,
past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since
gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He
had been trapped to his destruction.

Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven. He
had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly enslaved. He had
thought at the time that he loved her, and that supposition had
confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. This, then, was her
paltry little court, where man offered mock homage, and where she played
at being queen. Hugh had made the discovery that love was a much
overrated passion. He had always supposed so; but when he tired of Lady
Newhaven he was sure of it. His experience was, after all, only the same
as that which many men acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through
long and useful lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures
of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather
contemptible by a later one--that of falling in love with Rachel, and
the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had
sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or
woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his
birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first
person who had offered him anything in exchange.

His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady Newhaven. If
he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have borne his fate. But
the play had not been worth the candle. His position was damnable; but
that he could have borne--at least, so he thought if he had had his
day. But he had not had it. That thought rankled. To be hounded out of
life because he had mistaken paper money for real was not only u