earnest work,
were good and worth the winning. But yet, without Margaret, they were
as nothing to him. His whole heart cried aloud for Margaret. Without
her all the full rich hues of life faded into dull gray ashes.

With Margaret to strive for, he had felt himself capable of mighty
things. Without her--!

And that she should throw herself away on a Charles Pixley!--Charles
the smiling, the imperturbable, the fount of irrepressible chatter and
everlasting inanities! How could such a one as Charles Pixley possibly
satisfy her nobler nature? Out of the question! Impossible! But then
it is just possible that he was not exactly in the best state of mind
for forming an unbiassed opinion on so large a question as that.

Anyway he was out of it, and Margaret Brandt was henceforth nothing to
him. If he said it once he said it hundreds of times, as if the simple
reiteration of so obvious a truth would make it one whit the truer,
when his whole heart was clamouring that Margaret was all the worlds
to him and the only thing in the world that he wanted.

With an eye, perhaps, to his obvious lack of cheerfulness, his
namesake and host suggested various diversions,--fishing for congers
and rock-fish, a voyage round the island, a trip across to Herm, a day
among the rabbits on. Brecqhou. But he wanted none of them. His life
was flapping on a broken wing and all he wanted was to be left alone.

In time the wound would heal, and he would take up his work again and
find his solace in it. But wounds such as this are not healed in a
day. It was raw and sore yet, the new skin had not had time to form.

He recalled Lady Elspeth's dissatisfaction with his love-scenes, and
thought, grimly, that now he could at all events enter fully into the
feelings of the man who had lost the prize, and would be able to
depict them to the life. If the choice had been left to him he would
gladly have dispensed with all such knowledge to its profoundest
depths, if only the prize had remained to him. But the choice had been
Margaret's, and the prize was Charles Pixley's.

If there was one thing he could have imagined without actual
experience, it was how a man may feel when he loses. What he could not
at present by any possibility conceive was--how it might feel to be
the accepted lover of such a girl as Margaret Brandt.

Confound her money! If it were not for that, Pixley would probably
never have wanted to marry her. Money was answerable for half the