ite side. Was it so utterly impossible for
a woman with this woman's record to make a good wife to some man yet? I
did not admit it for an instant; he would be a lucky man who won so
healthy and so good a heart; thus I argued to myself with Mrs. Lascelles
in my mind, and nobody else. But Bob Evers was not a man, I was not sure
that he was out of his teens, and to think of him was to think at once
with Sir John Sankey and all the rest. Yes, yes, it would be madness and
suicide in such a youth; there could be no two opinions about that; and
yet I felt indignant at the mildest expression of that which I myself
could not deny.

Such was my somewhat chaotic state of mind when I had fled the
billiard-room in my turn, and put on my overcoat and cap to commune with
myself outside. Nobody did justice to Mrs. Lascelles; it was terribly
hard to do her justice; those were perhaps the ideas that were oftenest
uppermost. I did not see how I was to be the exception and prove the
rule; my brief was for Bob, and there was an end of it. It was foolish
to worry, especially on such a night. The moon had waxed since my
arrival, and now hung almost round and altogether dazzling in the little
sky the mountains left us. Yet I had the terrace all to myself; the
magnificent voice of our latest celebrity had drawn everybody else in
doors, or under the open drawing-room windows through which it poured
out into the glorious night. And in the vivid moonlight the very
mountains seemed to have gathered about the little human hive upon their
heights, to be listening to the grand rich notes that had some right to
break their ancient silence.

"If doughty deeds my lady please,
Right soon I'll mount my steed;
And strong his arm, and fast his seat,
That bears frae me the meed.
I'll wear thy colours in my cap,
Thy picture at my heart;
And he that bends not to thine eye
Shall rue it to his smart!"

It was a brave new setting to brave old lines, as simple and direct as
themselves, studiously in keeping, passionate, virile, almost inspired;
and the whole so justly given that the great notes did not drown the
words as they often will, but all came clean to the ear. No wonder the
hotel held its breath! I was standing entranced myself, an outpost of
the audience underneath the windows, whose fringe I could just see round
the uttermost angle of the hotel, when Bob Evers ran down the steps, and
came toward me in such guise that I could