ate to his son; the crisp air rushing past them,
making their faces glow with the tingling blood until, burning the
ground, they dashed up the avenue that leads to the white mansion of
Pulwick, and halted amidst a cloud of steam before its Palladian
portico.

What happened to Adrian the moment after happens, as a rule, only once
in a man's lifetime.

Through the opening portals the guest, whose condensed biography the
Squire had been imparting to his son (all unconsciously eliciting
thereby more repulsion than admiration in the breast of that
fastidious young misogynist), appeared herself to welcome the return
of her host.

Adrian, as he retired a pace to let his father ascend the steps, first
caught a glimpse of a miraculously small and arched foot, clad in pink
silk, and, looking suddenly up, met fully the flash of great dark
eyes, set in a small white face, more brilliant in their immense
blackness than even the glinting icicles pendant over the lintel that
now shot back the sun's sinking glory.

The spell was of the kind that the reason of man can never sanction,
and yet that have been ever and will be while man is. This youth,
virgin of heart, dreamy of head who had drifted to his twentieth
year, all unscathed by passion or desire, because he had never met
aught in flesh and blood answering to his unconscious ideal, was
struck to the depth of his soul by the presence of one, as unlike this
same ideal as any living creature could be; struck with fantastic
suddenness, and in that all-encompassing manner which seizes the
innermost fibres of the being.

It was a pang of pain, but a revelation of glory.

He stood for some moments, with paling cheeks and hotly-beating heart,
gazing back into the wondrous eyes. She, yielding her cheek carelessly
to the Squire's hearty kiss, examined the new-comer curiously the
while:

"Why--how now, tut, tut, what's this?" thundered the father, who,
following the direction of her eyes, wheeled round suddenly to
discover his son's strange bearing, "Have you lost all the manners as
well as the notions of a gentleman, these last two years? Speak to
Madame de Savenaye, sir!--Cecile, this is my son; pray forgive him, my
dear; the fellow's shyness before ladies is inconceivable. It makes a
perfect fool of him, as you see."

But Madame de Savenaye's finer wits had already perceived something
different from the ordinary display of English shyness in the young
man, whose eyes remained