dence, I suppose; or perhaps she might be too
closely watched, or her letters might be stopped: who can say?"

"Nobody but herself, clearly. Well?"

"I was sent to Madrid; and I heard nothing of her except that Sabaroff
was shot in a duel about her with Lustoff; but that was two years
afterwards."

"And when he was shot why did you not in due course go to the White Sea,
or wherever she was, and offer yourself?"

"The truth is, I had become acquainted with a Spanish lady----"

"A great many Spanish ladies, no doubt! What a half-hearted Lothario!"

"Not at all. Only just at that time----"

"Manillas, mandolines, balconies, bull-fights, high mass, and moonlight
had the supremacy! My dear Alan, tell your story how you will, you can't
make yourself heroic."

"I have not the smallest pretension to do so," says Gervase, very much
annoyed. "I have no heroism. I leave it to Lord Brandolin, who has been
shipwrecked five hundred times, I believe, and ridden as many
dromedaries over unknown sand-plains as Gordon----"

"As you don't care in the least for her, why should you care if his
shipwrecks and his dromedaries interest her? We don't know that they do;
but----"

"How little sympathy you have!"

"George says I have always a great deal too much. What do you want me to
sympathize with? According to your own story, you 'loved and rode away;'
at least, took a through-ticket across Europe, as Lovelace has to do in
these prosaic days. If you did not go back to Russia when you might have
gone back, _a qui la faute_? Nobody's but your own and the nameless
Spanish lady or ladies'!"

"You are very perverse."

"It is you who are, or who were, perverse. According to your own story,
you adored a woman when she was unattainable; when she became attainable
you did not even take the trouble to get into a railway-carriage: you
were otherwise amused. What romantic element is there in such a tale as
yours to excite the smallest fragment of interest? To judge you out of
your own mouth, you seem to me to have behaved with most uninteresting
inconstancy."

"It was four years, and she had never answered my letters."

"Really a reason to make you esteem her infinitely more than if she had
answered them. My dear Alan, you were a flirt, and you forgot as flirts
forget: why should one pity you for being so easily consoled? You ought
to be infinitely grateful that Madame Sabaroff did not send you reams of
reproaches, and telegraph you co