ng about it yet; would take time to think it over more
fully. Meanwhile I had found some comfort in the thought that things
would be to all outward appearance as they had been. Beryl and I would
be together as before; and did I, by any chance, cherish a wild vague
hope that anything might happen to cut the knot of the whole difficulty?
I believe I did.

But now the advent of this stranger upset all this. In him I saw a
rival, and a potent one, for he was probably in a position to declare
himself at any moment, while I must perforce lie low. Not only this,
but there was that in the personality of the fellow which rendered him
doubly dangerous, for he was one of those men to whom all women would
naturally turn, some indeed with headlong resistless attraction; whereas
I, Kenrick Holt--plain, common-place, plodding--knew myself to be
endowed with no such attributes, and had anybody hinted to the contrary,
should have laughed in their face.

Upon the resolve to keep my own counsel for the present followed another
one, and this was to throw off the dead weight which the change in my
fortunes had at first bound upon me, outwardly at any rate. Wherefore
as we all shook down again into the ordinary routine of life, I avoided
any appearance of aloofness and strove to bear myself as if there had
been no change at all. But it involved a tremendous effort of will,
amounting at times almost to physical anguish. For instance, if we were
taking a collective walk or ride, and I had to witness the incidental
pairing off together of Beryl and Pentridge, the bitter reflection that
up till now it would have been her and myself would require some
crushing down, it may safely be assumed; or in half a hundred incidents
of everyday life he had a way of showing her little attentions, and that
in a way which to me, at any rate, was unmistakable, though there was
this about Pentridge, he never trod upon his own heels, so to say, with
over-eagerness.

Still, my manner towards her must have undergone an unconscious change,
for more than once Beryl would give me a strange look which I could not
quite fathom. Sometimes, too, she would take on almost a coldness
towards me, as different from her former free, unaffected cordiality as
it could possibly be. Ah! a light suddenly dawned upon me. I was in
the way, was becoming a nuisance to her. And acting upon this idea, I
threw myself into the work of the place with tenfold energy. That would