ve her no more?"

"Why, no," I answered, mustering a cool smile. "Folly such as that goes
by with youth."

"Your age is twenty-four?"

"Yes, I am twenty-four."

"And you love her no longer?"

"I tell you, no longer, sir."

The Vicar opened his box and took a large pinch.

"Then," said he, the pinch being between his finger and thumb and just
half-way on the road to his nose, "you love some other woman, Simon."

He spoke not as a man who asks a question nor even as one who hazards an
opinion; he declared a fact and needed no answer to confirm him. "Yes,
you love some other woman, Simon," said he, and there left the matter.

"I don't," I cried indignantly. Had I told myself a hundred times that I
was not in love to be told by another that I was? True, I might have
been in love, had not----

"Ah, who goes there?" exclaimed the Vicar, springing nimbly to the
window and looking out with eagerness. "I seem to know the gentleman.
Come, Simon, look."

I obeyed him. A gentleman, attended by two servants, rode past rapidly;
twilight had begun to fall, but the light served well enough to show me
who the stranger was. He rode hard and his horse's head was towards the
Manor gates.

"I think it is my Lord Carford," said the Vicar. "He goes to the Manor,
as I think."

"I think it is and I think he does," said I; and for a single moment I
stood there in the middle of the room, hesitating, wavering, miserable.

"What ails you, Simon? Why shouldn't my Lord Carford go to the Manor?"
cried the Vicar.

"Let him go to the devil!" I cried, and I seized my hat from the table
where it lay.

The Vicar turned to me with a smile on his lips.

"Go, lad," said he, "and let me not hear you again deny my propositions.
They are founded on an extensive observation of humanity and----"

Well, I know not to this day on what besides. For I was out of the house
before the Vicar completed his statement of the authority that underlay
his propositions.

CHAPTER XXI

THE STRANGE CONJUNCTURE OF TWO GENTLEMEN

I have heard it said that King Charles laughed most heartily when he
learnt how a certain gentleman had tricked M. de Perrencourt and carried
off from his clutches the lady who should have gone to prepare for the
Duchess of York's visit to the Court of France. "This Uriah will not be
set in the forefront of the battle," said he, "and therefore David can't
have his way." He would have laughed, I think, even although my act