of all old feelings, took counsel with
himself for one measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you
must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love,
and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself,
affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human
likelihood cross his path again. So whatever he did didn't much matter.
She was marvellously like the girl who "took a deep interest" and the
rest of the formula. All things considered, it would be pleasant to make
the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a
very little time--to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again.
Every one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular
monomania was his old love, Alice Chisane.

He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as
he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the
facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties,
and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and
rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are
matters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention
of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. He wanted to
be deceived, he meant to be deceived, and he deceived himself very
thoroughly. Not only were the face and figure, the face and figure of
Alice Chisane, but the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and
so were the turns of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman
has, of gait and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the
same. The turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes
at the end of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over
the saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most
marvellous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next
room, while Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note
for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--"Poor
Wandering One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for Hannasyde in
the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual woman herself--in
the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she and Alice Chisane
being cast in different moulds. But all that Hannasyde wanted to know
and see and think about, was this maddening and perplexing likeness o