inments, he now gave himself up to a very
hearty and honest admiration of Bradley. "You know it's awfully kind of
him to talk to a fellow like me who just pulled through, and never got
any prizes at Oxford, and don't understand the half of these things," he
remarked confidentially to Mrs. Bradley. "He knows more about the things
we used to go in for at Oxford than lots of our men, and he's never been
there. He's uncommonly clever."

"Jim was always very brilliant," returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently,
and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "I
wish he were more practical."

"Practical! Oh, I say, Mrs. Bradley! Why, a fellow that can go in among
a lot of workmen and tell them just what to do--an all-round chap
that can be independent of his valet, his doctor, and his--banker! By
Jove--THAT'S practical!"

"I mean," said Mrs. Bradley, coldly, "that there are some things that
a gentleman ought not to be practical about nor independent of. Mr.
Bradley would have done better to have used his talents in some more
legitimate and established way."

Mainwaring looked at her in genuine surprise. To his inexperienced
observation Bradley's intelligent energy and, above all, his
originality, ought to have been priceless in the eyes of his wife--the
American female of his species. He felt that slight shock which most
loyal or logical men feel when first brought face to face with the easy
disloyalty and incomprehensible logic of the feminine affections. Here
was a fellow, by Jove, that any woman ought to be proud of, and--and--he
stopped blankly. He wondered if Miss Macy sympathized with her cousin.

Howbeit, this did not affect the charm of their idyllic life at The
Lookout. The precipice over which they hung was as charming as ever
in its poetic illusions of space and depth and color; the isolation of
their comfortable existence in the tasteful yet audacious habitation,
the pleasant routine of daily tasks and amusements, all tended to make
the enforced quiet and inaction of his convalescence a lazy recreation.
He was really improving; more than that, he was conscious of a certain
satisfaction in this passive observation of novelty that was healthier
and perhaps TRUER than his previous passion for adventure and that
febrile desire for change and excitement which he now felt was a part
of his disease. Nor were incident and variety entirely absent from this
tranquil experience. He was one day astonished a