then had hardly polluted his natural character, and
his desire had been of a kind which was almost more gratified in
its disappointment than it would have been in its fruition. On the
morning after the lady had frowned on him he had told himself that he
was very well out of that trouble. He knew that it would never be for
him to hang up on the walls of a temple a well-worn lute as a votive
offering when leaving the pursuits of love. _Idoneus puellis_ he
never could have been. So he married Lady Glencora and was satisfied.
The story of Burgo Fitzgerald was told to him, and he supposed that
most girls had some such story to tell. He thought little about it,
and by no means understood her when she said to him, with all the
impressiveness which she could throw into the words, "You must know
that I have really loved him." "You must love me now," he had replied
with a smile; and then as regarded his mind, the thing was over. And
since his marriage he had thought that things matrimonial had gone
well with him, and with her too. He gave her almost unlimited power
of enjoying her money, and interfered but little in her way of
life. Sometimes he would say a word of caution to her with reference
to those childish ways which hardly became the dull dignity of
his position; and his words then would have in them something of
unintentional severity,--whether instigated or not by the red-haired
Radical Member of Parliament, I will not pretend to say;--but on
the whole he was contented and loved his wife, as he thought, very
heartily, and at least better than he loved any one else. One cause
of unhappiness, or rather one doubt as to his entire good fortune,
was beginning to make itself felt, as his wife had to her sorrow
already discovered. He had hoped that before this he might have heard
that she would give him a child. But the days were young yet for that
trouble, and the care had not become a sorrow.

But this judicious arrangement as to properties, this well-ordered
alliance between families, had not perhaps suited her as well as it
had suited him. I think that she might have learned to forget her
early lover, or to look back upon it with a soft melancholy hardly
amounting to regret, had her new lord been more tender in his ways
with her. I do not know that Lady Glencora's heart was made of that
stern stuff which refuses to change its impressions; but it was a
heart, and it required food. To love and fondle someone,--to be loved
an