kneyed
the plot of the play, how bald the dialogue, how indifferent the
acting! It was all alike delightful to those two spectators: for a
light that shone neither on earth nor sky brightened everything they
looked on when they sat side by side.

And during all these pleasant afternoons at the villa, or evenings at
the theatre, Diana Paget had to sit by and witness the happiness which
she had dreamed might some day be hers. It was a part of her duty to be
present on these occasions, and she performed that duty punctiliously.
She might have made excuses for absenting herself, but she was too
proud to make any such excuses.

"Am I such a coward as to tell a lie in order to avoid a little pain
more or less? If I say I have a headache, and stay in my own room while
he is here, will the afternoon seem any more pleasant or any shorter to
me? The utmost difference would be the difference between a dull pain
and a sharp pain; and I think the sharper agony is easier to bear."
Having argued with herself thus, Miss Paget endured her weekly
martyrdom with Spartan fortitude.

"What have I lost?" she said to herself, as she stole a furtive glance
now and then at the familiar face of her old companion. "What is this
treasure, the loss of which makes me seem to myself such an abject
wretch? Only the love of a man who at his best is not worthy of this
girl's pure affection, and at his worst must have been unworthy even of
mine. But then at his worst he is dearer to me than the best man who
ever lived upon this earth."

CHAPTER III.

MR. HAWKEHURST AND MR. GEORGE SHELDON COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING.

There was no such thing as idleness for Valentine Hawkehurst during
these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that
oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing
the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little
advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the
pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the
great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of
the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who
love their wives and children, and go to their parish church on
Sundays. He had an incentive to steady industry, which had hitherto
been wanting in his life. He was beloved, and any shame that came to
him would be a still more bitter humiliation for the woman who loved
him.

He felt t