various interests of his life, admitting
each only in its due order and place; but none the less had he been
conscious all along that somewhere in the background of his mind her
image subsisted, and now that he was at leisure again to give her
that place of honour in his consideration which she had long been
insensibly acquiring, he was more than ever determined to do all
that lay in his power to make her his wife.

It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long
before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely
considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the
subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have
contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate
topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had
wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone
with him; so that, however much he had desired it, he could never,
without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in striking the
precisely right personal note.

To-night, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was
thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained,
impassioned, and, if necessary, humble--but, above all, perfectly
direct; he would brook no faltering, feminine evasions; would insist
on an answer, and on a right answer too, pointing out, with the
close reasoning acquired in his profession, the superb propriety of
the match. And he believed that she would be convinced. Was it not
half of her attraction that she was a woman of intelligence, not a
silly school-girl, who flirted and danced?

In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to
feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them,
notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that
inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who
might have been first on the field.

Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse
with his coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he
lingered, growing more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the
occasion drew near. Yet he could remind himself at last that--at any
rate, to his knowledge--there was no one else whose pretensions the
lady preferred, since Rainham, the man whom he had marked as
dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to be feared.

It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he
had been invited, and