And indeed it was not of Octavius Little, nor yet of Lady Adela's novel,
that Maurice Mangan was thinking as he carelessly walked away through
the dark London thoroughfares, towards his rooms in Victoria Street. He
was thinking of that quiet little Surrey village; and of two boys there
who had a great belief in each other--and in themselves, too, for the
matter of that; and of all the beautiful and wonderful dreams they
dreamed while as yet the far-reaching future was veiled from them. And
then he thought of Linn Moore's dressing-room at the theatre; and of the
paints and powder and vulgar tinsel that had to fit him out for
exhibition before the footlights; and of the feverish whirl of life and
the bedazzlement of popularity and fashionable petting; and somehow or
other the closing lines of Mrs. Browning's poem would come ever and anon
into his head as a sort of unceasing refrain:

"The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed that grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."

CHAPTER III.

NINA.

One morning Lionel was just about to go out (he had already been round
to the gymnasium and got his fencing over) when the house-porter came up
and said that a young lady wished to see him.

"What does she want?" he said, impatiently--for something had gone wrong
with the clasp of his cigarette-case, and he could not get it right.
"What's her name? Who is she?"

"She gave me her name, sir; but I did not quite catch it," said the
factotum of the house.

"Oh, well, send her up," said he; no doubt this was some trembling
_debutante_, accompanied by an ancient duenna and a roll of music. And
then he went to the window, to try to get the impenitent clasp to shut.

But perhaps he would not have been so wholly engrossed with that
trifling difficulty had he known who this was who had come softly up the
stair and was now standing, irresolute, smiling, wondering, at the open
door. She was a remarkably pretty, even handsome young lady, whose pale,
clear, olive complexion and coal-black hair bespoke her Southern birth;
while there was an eager and yet timid look in her lustrous, soft black
eyes, and something about the mobile, half-parted mouth that seemed to
say she hardly knew whether to cry or laugh over this meeting with an
old friend. A very charming picture she presented there; for, besides
her attractive personal appearance, she was very neatly, not to say
coquettishly