love any man?--that she, who could so redeem herself and so bestow
herself, should have any heart, any true feeling of what love is?

And yet this was not the worst of it. Such love as she had to give,
had she not given it to this Harcourt even before she had rescued
herself from her former lover? Had she not given this man her
preference, such preference as she had to give, then, then when she
was discussing with him how best to delay her nuptials with her
acknowledged suitor? This successful, noisy, pushing, worldly man had
won her by his success and his worldliness. The glitter of the gold
had caught her; and so she had been unhappy, and had pined, and worn
herself with grief till she could break away from her honest troth,
and bind herself to the horn of the golden calf.

'Twas thus that he now thought of her, thus that he spoke of her to
himself out loud, now that he could wander alone, with no eye to
watch him, no ear to hear him. And yet he loved her with a strong
love, with a mad passion such as he had never felt before. Much as he
blamed her, thoroughly as he despised her for being so venal; yet he
blamed, nay, scorned, himself more vehemently in that he had let this
plausible knave with his silken words rob from him the only treasure
worth his having. Why had he not toiled? Why had he not made a name
for himself? Why had he not built a throne on which his lady-love
might sit and shine before the world?

CHAPTER XI.

HURST STAPLE.

The next three or four days passed by heavily enough, and then Arthur
Wilkinson returned. He returned on a Saturday evening; as clergymen
always do, so as to be ready for their great day of work. There
are no Sabbath-breakers to be compared, in the vehemence of their
Sabbath-breaking, to hard-worked parochial clergymen--unless, indeed,
it be Sunday-school children, who are forced on that day to learn
long dark collects, and stand in dread catechismal row before their
spiritual pastors and masters.

In the first evening there was that flow of friendship which always
exists for the few first hours of meeting between men who are really
fond of each other. And these men were fond of each other; the fonder
perhaps because each of them had now cause for sorrow. Very little
was said between Arthur and Adela. There was not apparently much to
alarm the widow in their mutual manner, or to make her think that
Miss Gauntlet was to be put in her place. Adela sat among the other
g