s to the details of the wild life about
him. His own miserable reverie absorbed him. What was it that had made
the charm of those early weeks in July immediately after his parting with
her? What was it which had added zest to his work, and enchantment to the
summer beauty of the country, and, like a hidden harmony dimly resonant
within him, had kept life tuneful and delightful? He could put words to
it now. It had been nothing less than a settled foresight, a deep
conviction, of _Isabel Bretherton's failure_! What a treachery! But
yes,--the vision perpetually before his eyes had been the vision of a
dying fame, a waning celebrity, a forsaken and discrowned beauty! And
from that abandonment and that failure he had dimly foreseen the rise
and upspringing of new and indescribable joy. He had seen her, conscious
of defeat and of the inexorable limits of her own personality, turning
to the man who had read her truly and yet had loved her, surely, from
the very beginning, and finding in his love a fresh glory and an
all-sufficient consolation. This had been the inmost truth, the centre,
the kernel of all his thought, of all his life. He saw it now with sharp
distinctness,--now that every perception was intensified by pain and
longing.

Then, as he went over the past, he saw how this consciousness had been
gradually invaded and broken up by his sister's letters. He remembered
the incredulous impatience with which he had read the earlier ones. So,
Marie thought him mistaken! 'Isabel Bretherton would be an actress
yet'--'she had genius, after all'--'she was learning, growing, developing
every day.' Absurd! _He_, had been able to keep his critical estimate of
the actress and his personal admiration of the woman separate from one
another. But evidently Marie's head had been confused, misled, by her
heart. And then, little by little, his incredulity had yielded, and his
point of view had changed. Instead of impatience of Marie's laxity of
judgment, what he had been fiercely conscious of for days was jealousy of
Paul de Chateauvieux--jealousy of his opportunities, his influence, his
relation towards that keen sweet nature. That, too, had been one of his
dreams of the future,--the dream of tutoring and training her young
unformed intelligence. He had done something towards it; he had, as it
were, touched the spring which had set free all this new and unexpected
store of power. But, if he had planted, others had watered, and others
wo