ics and
parties and dances to which the Mayor's wife or the mothers of some of the
pupils would invite or chaperon her, her vivid, delicate, fragile beauty
would draw, first men's eyes, and then their owners, not all unhandsome or
undesirable; while showier girls looked in vain for partners or
companions. The little triumph, the consciousness of being admired and
sought after, would quicken Lynette's pulses, and heighten the radiance of
her eyes, and lend animation to her girlish chatter and gaiety to her
laughter--at first. Then some over-bold advance, some hot look or
whispered word, would bring quick recollection leaping into the lovely
eyes, and drive the vivid colour from the virginal transparent face, and
stamp the smiling mouth into pale, breathless lines of Fear. That night in
the tavern on the veld had branded a child with premature knowledge of the
ferocious, ravening, devouring Beast that lies in Man concealed. Again she
felt the scorching breath of lust upon her; she quailed under the
intolerable touch; she shook like a reed in the brutal hands of the evil,
dominating power that would brook no resistance and knew no mercy. The
horrible obsession came upon her now, all the stronger for those moments
of forgetfulness:

"_Clang--clang--clang!_"

The little Irish novice had rung the chapel bell for Sext and None. She
could hear, from the nuns' end of the big rambling, two-storied house, the
rustling habits sweeping along the passage. She hurried to the door, and
tore it open, frantically as though that ravening breath had been hot upon
her neck, saw the dear black figure of the Mother sweeping towards her,
and rushed into the arms that were held out, hiding from that burning,
scorching, hideous memory in the bosom that dead Richard Mildare had
turned from in his blindness.

Just as Beauvayse, stimulated by the recollection of the Mayor's promise
to introduce him to the loveliest girl he had ever seen in his life, or
ever should see, mentally registered a vow that he would keep the old
buffer up to that, by listening to his interminable hunting-stories, and
laughing at his venerable jokes, to tears if necessary. Love, like War,
sharpened a fellow's faculties....

"It's rum to reflect," Beauvayse said, conscious of perpetrating an
epigram, "that from time immemorial the fellow who wants to make up to a
young woman has always had to begin by getting round an old man!"

He looked round for the old man, whom the