d had ever passed between them that had any
value now. If he could have washed the thought of her forever from his
memory, how greatly he would have rejoiced at that moment.

Well, it was over; written down against him, that he had been what the
world called a jilt and a fool; yes, certainly a fool, but not so
great a one as to follow his folly to its ultimate conclusion, and tie
himself for life to a woman he did not love.

Lavendar was extraordinarily sensitive about the breaking of his
engagement; partly because Miss Meredith herself, in her first rage,
had avowed his responsibility for her blighted future, giving him no
chance for chivalrous behaviour; partly because in all his transient
love affairs he had easily tired of the women who inspired them. He
seemed thirsty for love, but weary of it almost as soon as the draught
reached his lips.

And now had he a chance again?--or was it all to end in disappointment
once more, in that cold disappointment of the heart that has received
stones for bread? It was not entirely his own fault; he had expected
much from life, and hitherto had received very little. But Robinette!

"Let me find all her faults now," he said to himself, "or evermore
keep silent; meantime I hope I am not concealing too many of my
own."

He tried to force himself into criticism; to look at her as a cold
observer from the outside would have done; for that curious Border
country of Love which he had entered has not an equable climate at
all. It is fire and frost alternate; and criticism is either roused
almost to a morbid pitch, or else the faculty is drugged, and nothing,
not even the enumeration of a hundred foibles will awaken it for a
time.

When the cold fit had been upon him the evening before, Lavendar had
said to himself that her manner was too free--that she had led him on
too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he
repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish,
too unthinking, in what she said and did. "But she's a widow after
all, though she's only two and twenty," he went on to himself. "Hang
it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband's grave I
should be moaning at that; and because I see that it is not, I become
critical. There's nothing quite perfect in life!"

He had begun by noticing some little defects in her personal
appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles
matter, here or there? Then he reme