everything, all troubles may be mine, but the fact remains that
I was born a gentleman!' Those two men who cut me are lords. What a
delight in one's life to have a name all to one's self!" And then
Mike lost himself in a maze of little dreams. A gleam of mail;
escutcheons and castles; a hawk flew from fingers fair; a lady
clasped her hands when the lances shivered in the tourney; and Mike
was the hero that persisted in the course of this shifting little
dream.

The Brookes--Sally and Maggie--stopped to speak to him, and he went
to lunch with them. His interest in all they did and said was
unbounded, and that he might not be able to reproach himself with
waste of time, he contrived by hint and allusion to lay the
foundation for a future intrigue with one of the girls.

Lily Young, however, had never been forgotten; she had been as
constantly present in his mind as this sense of the sunshine and his
own happy condition. She had been parcel of and one with these but
now; as he drove to see her, he separated her from the morning
phenomena of his life, and began to think definitely of her.

Smiling, he called himself a brute, and regretted his failure. But in
her presence his cynicism was evanescent. She sat on a little sofa,
covered with an Indian shawl; behind her was a great bronze, the
celebrated gift of a celebrated Rajah to her mother. Mrs. Young had
been on a tour in the East with her husband, and ever since her house
had been frequented by decrepit old gentlemen interested in Arabi,
and other matters which they spoke of as Eastern questions.

Lily looked at Mike under her eyes as she passed across the room to
get him some tea, and they talked a little while. Then some three or
four great and very elderly historians entered, and she had to leave
him; and feeling he could not prolong his visit he went, conscious of
sensations of purity and some desire of goodness, if not for itself,
for the grace that goodness brings. He paid many visits in this
house, but conversations with learned Buddhists seemed the only
result; a _tete-a-tete_ with Lily seemed impossible. To his surprise
he never met her in society, and his heart beat fast when one evening
he heard she was expected; and for the first time forgetful of the
multitude, and nervous as a school-boy in search of his first love,
he sought her in the crowd. He feared to remain with her, and it
seemed to him he had accomplished much in asking her to come down to
suppe