if
they had displeased her or she had grown weary of them. Love was to her
a jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited her fancy to do so;
but would not the day come when she would grow tired of it or demand
another, and so fling it and me to the dogs?

"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her side, and pay her my
court, and now and then, when the humor took her, to press her hand or
drop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I could do this, was it for me
to question a future which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasures
than more?

"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my
devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the
smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I
expected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for her
woman's intuition must have told her, what observation had as yet failed
to tell me, that there was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed a
protector.

"The day that I first recognized this fact made an era in my life. I had
been so happy, so at ease with myself, so sure of her growing confidence
and of my coming happiness. That I had cause for this, the conduct of
her friends and the jealousy of her lovers seemed to prove. Though she
gave no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as to a support,
and allowed my passion the constant feast of her presence and the
stimulation of her voice.

"Her enchantments, and they were innumerable, were never spared me, nor
did she stint herself of a smile that could allure, nor of a glance that
could arouse or perplex.

"I was happy, and questioned only the extent of my patience, which I
felt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage
proceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You can
realize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when,
coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her face
disappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which I
had always felt was natural to it, but which no passion of mine had ever
been able to evoke, and then perceived in the shadow from which she had
just glided, Edwin Urquhart, pale as excessive feeling could make him,
and so shaken by the first real emotion which had ever probably moved
his selfish soul that he not only failed to see me when I advanced, but
hastened by me, and away into the solitudes of the garden, without