had indeed good reason to augur ill of the ending of his
love-dream; but it was in his nature always to walk straight on to the
accomplishment of his purpose, overlooking the obstacles that lay
between and the dangers that lay beyond. This partly accounted for his
utter insensibility to ordinary inconveniences and annoyances. His own
words to Molyneux one day, when the latter remarked on this peculiarity,
though somewhat allegorical, expressed his theory and practice fairly:
"Hal, when we are traveling, we always remember where we change our
large notes; but life is not long enough to recollect how the thalers
and piastres go." His companion thought this rather a brilliant
illustration, especially as it squared with his own ideas of existence.
But in reality, between the two men there was a marked distinction. A
genial kindliness in the one, and a hard unscrupulous determination in
the other, worked out nearly the same results.

Royston liked Cecil Tresilyan better than any woman he had ever seen,
and he made up his mind to win her. It is more than doubtful if he took
the probable consequences to either into consideration at all. Foot by
foot he was gaining ground till he felt almost sure of success; but this
confidence never made him for an instant less vigilant in watching the
chances, less careful in scoring every point of the game. He had played
it long enough to know these right well.

Yet to him, too, the Past brought its warning. He was rarely troubled or
favored with dreams; but one night was an exception to the rule. To
understand it you must look back once more, and bear with me while we
moralize yet again. _Excusez du peu._

There is a regret that has power to move and torment the coldest Stoic
that vegetates on earth; it comes when our own hand or act has slain the
one living thing that loved us best of all. We may have done the deed
unwittingly or unwillingly; we may have been unconscious of the love
that was borne us till it was too late for acknowledgment; we may never
in thought or word or act have injured our victim before that last wrong
of the death-blow; well for those who can plead so fair an excuse; yet
even this, with all the rest, the inexorable Nemesis laughs to scorn. I
wonder that poets and dramatists have not oftener selected this saddest
theme. It may be true that the last murmur from the lips of the
Llewellyn, when his life was ebbing away in the Pass of the Ambush,
syllabled the name, no