hich he did not find it compatible
with his usual condition of life altogether to disbelieve. If he had
ever loved any woman he loved her. He certainly respected her as he had
never respected any other young woman. He had found the pleasure to be
derived from her society to be very different from that which had come
from his friendship with others. With her he could be perfectly
innocent, and at the same time completely happy. To dance with her, to
ride with her, to walk with her, to sit with the privilege of looking
at her, was joy of itself, and required nothing beyond. It was a
delight to him to have any little thing to do for her. When his daily
life was in any way joined with hers there was a brightness in it which
he thoroughly enjoyed though he did not quite understand. When that
affair of the dance came, in which Lord George had declared his
jealousy, he had been in truth very unhappy because she was unhappy,
and he had been thoroughly angry with the man, not because the man had
interfered with his own pleasures, but because of the injury and the
injustice done to the wife. He found himself wounded, really hurt,
because she had been made subject to calumny. When he tried to analyse
the feeling he could not understand it. It was so different from
anything that had gone before! He was sure that she liked him, and yet
there was a moment in which he thought that he would purposely keep out
of her way for the future, lest he might be a trouble to her. He loved
her so well that his love for a while almost made him unselfish.

And yet,--yet he might be mistaken about her. It had been the theory of
his life that young married women become tired of their husbands, and
one of his chief doctrines that no man should ever love in such a way
as to believe in the woman he loves. After so many years, was he to
give up his philosophy? Was he to allow the ground to be cut from under
his feet by a young creature of twenty-one who had been brought up in a
county town? Was he to run away because a husband had taken it into his
head to be jealous? All the world had given him credit for his
behaviour at the Kappa-kappa. He had gathered laurels,--very much
because he was supposed to be the lady's lover. He had never boasted to
others of the lady's favour; but he knew that she liked him, and he had
told himself that he would be poor-spirited if he abandoned her.

He drove up to the "Lion" and ordered a room. He did not know whether
he