joy
in watching the slightest shadow that is made by the one loved
object,--that may be made by her, or, by some violent conjecture of
the mind, may be supposed to have been so made? Such love as that is,
I think, always innocent. Burgo Fitzgerald did not love like that. I
almost doubt whether he can be said to have loved at all. There was
in his breast a mixed, feverish desire, which he took no trouble to
analyse. He wanted money. He wanted the thing of which this Palliser
had robbed him. He wanted revenge,--though his desire for that was
not a burning desire. And among other things, he wanted the woman's
beauty of the woman whom he coveted. He wanted to kiss her again as
he had once kissed her, and to feel that she was soft, and lovely,
and loving for him. But as for seeing her shadow, unless its movement
indicated some purpose in his favour,--I do not think that he cared
much about that.

And why then was he there? Because in his unreasoning folly he did
not know what step to take, or what step not to take. There are men
whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing
they want. She might see him from the window, and come to him. I do
not say that he thought that it would be so. I fancy that he never
thought at all about that or about anything. If you lie under a tree,
and open your mouth, a plum may fall into it. It was probably an
undefined idea of some such chance as this which brought him against
the railings in the front of Mr Palliser's house; that, and a feeling
made up partly of despair and partly of lingering romance that he
was better there, out in the night air, under the gas-lamps, than
he could be elsewhere. There he stood and looked, and cursed his
ill-luck. But his curses had none of the bitterness of those which
George Vavasor was always uttering. Through it all there remained
about Burgo one honest feeling,--one conviction that was true,--a
feeling that it all served him right, and that he had better,
perhaps, go to the devil at once, and give nobody any more trouble.
If he loved no one sincerely, neither did he hate any one; and
whenever he made any self-inquiry into his own circumstances, he
always told himself that it was all his own fault. When he cursed
his fate, he only did so because cursing is so easy. George Vavasor
would have ground his victims up to powder if he knew how; but Burgo
Fitzgerald desired to hurt no one.

There he stood till he was cold, and then, as the