n, the kissing
might probably have gone on; and, whatever might have come of it,
there would have been no offer of marriage. He had believed that her
little manoeuvres had indicated love on her part, and he had felt
himself constrained to reciprocate the passion. She was beautiful in
his eyes. She was bright. She wore her clothes like a lady; and,--if it
was written in the Book of the Fates that some lady was to sit at the
top of his table,--Lady Carbury would look as well there as any other.
She had repudiated the kiss, and therefore he had felt himself bound
to obtain for himself the right to kiss her.

The offer had no sooner been made than he met her son reeling in,
drunk, at the front door. As he made his escape the lad had insulted
him. This perhaps helped to open his eyes. When he woke the next
morning, or rather late in the next day, after his night's work, he
was no longer able to tell himself that the world was all right with
him. Who does not know that sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that
first matutinal retrospection, and prospection, into things as they
have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of
hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done,
some word ill-spoken, some money misspent,--or perhaps a cigar too much,
or a glass of brandy and soda-water which he should have left
untasted? And when things have gone well, how the waker comforts
himself among the bedclothes as he claims for himself to be whole all
over, teres atque rotundus,--so to have managed his little affairs that
he has to fear no harm, and to blush inwardly at no error! Mr Broune,
the way of whose life took him among many perils, who in the course of
his work had to steer his bark among many rocks, was in the habit of
thus auditing his daily account as he shook off sleep about noon,--for
such was his lot, that he seldom was in bed before four or five in the
morning. On this Wednesday he found that he could not balance his
sheet comfortably. He had taken a very great step and he feared that
he had not taken it with wisdom. As he drank the cup of tea with which
his servant supplied him while he was yet in bed, he could not say of
himself, teres atque rotundus, as he was wont to do when things were
well with him. Everything was to be changed. As he lit a cigarette he
bethought himself that Lady Carbury would not like him to smoke in her
bedroom. Then he remembered other things. 'I'll be d---- if he