ou, that hast not tride,
What hell it is, in swing long to bide;
To loose good dayes that might be better spent,
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires."

He is quite assured she lives in utter ignorance of his love. No word
has escaped him, no smallest hint, that might declare to her the
passion that daily, hourly, grows stronger, and of which she is the
sole object. "The noblest mind the best contentment has," and he
contents himself as best he may on a smile here, a gentle word there,
a kindly pressure of the hand to-day, a look of welcome to-morrow.
These are liberally given, but nothing more. Ever since her engagement
to Horace Branscombe he has, of course, relinquished hope; but the
surrender of all expectation has not killed his love. He is silent
because he must be so, but his heart wakes, and

"Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty."

"See, there they are again," he says now, alluding to Georgie and her
ducal companion, as they emerge from behind some thick shrubs. Another
man is with them, too,--a tall, gaunt young man, with long hair, and a
cadaverous face, who is staring at Georgie as though he would
willingly devour her--but only in the interest of art. He is lecturing
on the "Consummate Daffodil," and is comparing it unfavorably with the
"Unutterable Tulip," and is plainly boring the two, with whom he is
walking, to extinction. He is Sir John Lincoln, that old-new friend of
Georgie's, and will not be shaken off.

"Long ago," says Georgie, tearfully, to herself, "he was not an
aesthete. Oh, how I _wish_ he would go back to his pristine freshness!"

But he won't: he maunders on unceasingly about impossible flowers,
that are all very well in their way, but whose exaltedness lives only
in his own imagination, until the duke, growing weary (as well he
might, poor soul), turns aside, and greets with unexpected cordiality
a group upon his right, that, under any other less oppressive
circumstances, would be abhorrent to him. But to spend a long hour
talking about one lily is not to be borne.

Georgie follows his example, and tries to escape Lincoln and the
tulips by diving among the aforesaid group. She is very
successful,--groups do not suit aesthetics,--and soon the gaun