alone, a prey to solitude and the often morbid musings
which solitude engenders?

He began to blame himself heartily for the misunderstanding that had
arisen out of his share in Neville's unhappy secret. Neville had been
weak and timid,--he had shrunk nervously from avowing that the notorious
Violet Vere was actually the woman he had so faithfully loved and
mourned,--but he, Philip, ought not to have humored him in these
fastidious scruples--he ought to have confided everything to Thelma. He
remembered now that he had once or twice been uneasy lest rumors of his
frequent visits to Miss Vere might possibly reach his wife's ears,--but,
then, as his purpose was absolutely disinterested and harmless, he did
not dwell on this idea, but dismissed it, and held his peace for
Neville's sake, contenting himself with the thought that, "If Thelma
_did_ hear anything, she would never believe a word against me."

He could not quite see where his fault had been,--though a fault there
was somewhere, as he uneasily felt--and he would no doubt have started
indignantly had a small elf whispered in his ear the word "_Conceit._"
Yet that was the name of his failing--that and no other. How many men,
otherwise noble-hearted, are seriously, though often unconsciously,
burdened with this large parcel of blown-out Nothing! Sir Philip did not
appear to be conceited--he would have repelled the accusation with
astonishment,--not knowing that in his very denial of the fault, the
fault existed. He had never been truly humbled but twice in his
life,--once as he knelt to receive his mother's dying benediction,--and
again when he first loved Thelma, and was uncertain whether his love
could be returned by so fair and pure a creature. With these two
exceptions, all his experience had tended to give him an excellent
opinion of himself,--and that he should possess one of the best and
loveliest wives in the world, seemed to him quite in keeping with the
usual course of things. The feeling that it was a sheer impossibility
for her to ever believe a word against him, rose out of this inward
self-satisfaction--this one flaw in his otherwise bright, honest, and
lovable character--a flaw of which he himself was not aware. Now, when
for the third time his fairy castle of perfect peace and pleasure seemed
shaken to its foundations,--when he again realized the uncertainty of
life or death, he felt bewildered and wretched. His chiefest pride was
centred in Thelma,