rength of mind to take the decided measures that
might have been of some avail; in fact, he had a vague idea that to act
on the offensive against his old comrade would be unpardonable
treachery. Arguing with the latter was simply absurd; for this reason,
if for no other, that from the moment his feelings became really
interested, no amount of diplomacy would have induced him to enter upon
the subject. Harry went about with a miserable, helpless sense of
complicity weighing him down, which was much aggravated by a few words
which dropped one morning from Dick Tresilyan.

Dick had been dining _tete-a-tete_ with Keene on the previous evening
after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of
a heavy night--a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without
a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having
"been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he said,
confidentially, "and the major got more than his allowance. He didn't
know what he was talking about at last, and he told me more of his
affairs than most people know, I think; of course, I'm as safe as a
church;" and Dick made a gallant but abortive attempt to wink with one
of his swollen eyelids.

Molyneux shrank away from the speaker with something very like a
suppressed groan--he had heard _that_ said before, and remembered what
came of it. Credulity was as dangerous when men thought Royston Keene
had lost his head as when women flattered themselves he had lost his
heart.

CHAPTER XIV.

If you will be good enough to look back on the one romance in which,
like the rest of the world, you probably indulged yourself, you will
remember, perhaps more distinctly than any other feature, the
_presentiment_ which haunted you from the very beginning. We were
absurdly sanguine and hopeful in those days--full of chivalrous resolves
and unlimited aspirations; but still the feeling would come back--if,
indeed, it ever left us--that in the dim background there was difficulty
and danger. We were not surprised when the small white speck rose out of
the sea, and it needed no prophet to tell us then that the heavens would
soon be black with clouds, and that there would be a great rain (which,
indeed, was the case, for there ensued a long continuance of wet
weather; it was a very tearful season). Oddly enough, that same
presentiment did not make us particularly melancholy or uncomfortable,
but seemed rather t