sed to live up there at the Abbey formerly. It was just like my
home. I ordered all the people about just as if they had been my own
servants,--and, indeed, they minded my orders more than their master's.
The habit grew so strong upon me, of being obeyed and followed, that I
suppose I must have forgot my own real condition. I take it I must have
lost sight of who and what I actually was, till one of the sons--a young
fellow in the service in India--came back and contrived to let me make
the discovery, that, though I never knew it, I was really living the
life of a dependant. I 'll not tell you how this stung me, but it did
sting me--all the more that I believed, I fancied, myself--don't laugh
at me--but I really imagined I was in love with one of the girls--Alice.
She was Alice Trafford then."

"I had heard of that," said Dolly, in a faint voice.

"Well, she too undeceived me--not exactly as unfeelingly nor as
offensively as her brother, but just as explicitly--you know what I
mean?"

"No; tell me more clearly," said she, eagerly.

"I don't know how to tell you. It's a long story,--that is to say, I was
a long while under a delusion, and she was a long while indulging it.
Fine ladies, I 'm told, do this sort of thing when they take a caprice
into their heads to civilize young barbarians of my stamp."

"That's not the generous way to look at it, Tony."

"I don't want to be generous,--the adage says one ought to begin by
being just. Skeffy--you know whom I mean, Skeff Darner--saw it clearly
enough--he warned me about it. And what a clever fellow he is! Would you
believe it, Dolly? he actually knew all the time that I was not really
in love when I thought I was. He knew that it was a something made up
of romance and ambition and boyish vanity, and that my heart, my real
heart, was never in it."

Dolly shook her head, but whether in dissent or in sorrow it was not
easy to say.

"Shall I tell you more?" cried Tony, as he drew her arm closer to him,
and took her hand in his; "shall I tell you more, Dolly? Skeff read me
as I could not read myself. He said to me, 'Tony, this is no case
of love, it is the flattered vanity of a very young fellow to be
distinguished not alone by the prettiest, but the most petted woman of
society. _You_,' said he, 'are receiving all the homage paid to her at
second-hand.' But more than all this, Dolly; he not merely saw that I
was not in love with Alice Trafford, but he saw with whom my h