en; it might have been," she had said, and the
curious leap of blood and pulse he had felt had vaguely shocked him. It
scarcely seemed becoming that so young a creature as this lovely hoyden
should so move a man. 'Twas the fashion that girl beauties should be
women early, and at Court he had seen young things, wives and mothers
when they were scarce older; but this one seemed more than half a boy
and--and--! Yet he knew that he had been in earnest when he had said,
"I would keep away."

"I _know_," he had said to himself when he had been alone later; "I
_know_ that if the creature were a woman, 'twould be best that I should
keep away--'twould be best for any man to keep away from her, who was
not free to bear any suffering his passion for her might bring him. The
man who will be chief of a great house--whose actions affect the lives
of hundreds--is not free, even to let himself be put to the
torture"--and he smiled unconsciously the smile which was a little
grim.

He had seen and studied many women, and in studying them had learned to
know much of himself. He had not been so unconscious of them as he had
seemed. Such a man must meet with adventures at any time, and at a
period still tainted by the freedom of a dissolute reign, even though
'tis near twenty years past, his life, in his own despite, must contain
incidents which would reveal much to the world, if related to it.
Roxholm had met with such adventures, little as they were to his taste,
and had found at both foreign and English Courts that all women were
not non-attacking creatures, and in discovering this had learned that a
man must be a stone to resist the luring of some lovely eyes.

"I need not think myself invulnerable," he had thought often. "I can
resist because I have loved none of them. Had it chanced otherwise--God
have mercy on my soul!"

And now the current of his life for weeks seemed strangely set towards
one being. When he returned to London after seeing his parents depart
for Italy, he met in his first walk in the city streets his erst
fellow-collegian and officer, Lieutenant Thomas Tantillion, in England
on leave, who almost hallooed with joy at sight of him, shaking him by
the hand as if his arm had been a pump-handle, and then thrusting his
own arm through it, and insisting affectionately on dragging him along
the street that he might pour forth his renewed protestations of
affection and the story of his adventures.

"Never was I more gl