at romance, he could hardly
fail to connect it with Benham or with Kilshaw. He shrank from the
exposure to Daisy which he would have to undergo, and from the pain
which he was doomed to inflict on her. Long years, no less than his own
mode of thought, had veiled from him the character of what he would have
to avow; the thing took on a new aspect when he forced himself to hear
it as it would strike a daughter's ears. And, by this time, he was
conscious--he could no longer affect to himself to be unconscious--that
the blow which was to fall on Daisy would strike another with equal,
perhaps greater, severity. He might remind himself, as he did over and
over again, of the improbability, nay, the absurdity of what had
happened; he might tell himself that he was no longer young, that time
had robbed him of anything that could catch a girl's fancy, that the
gulf of birth, associations, and surroundings yawned wide between. His
own experience and insight into temperament rose up and contradicted
him, and Alicia Derosne's face drove the truth into his mind. Seeking
for a hero, she had strangely, almost comically, he thought, made one
of him. Hero-worship, shutting out all criticism, had led her on till
she made of him, a man whose life bore no close scrutiny, a battered
politician, half visionary, half demagogue (for he did not spare himself
in his thoughts)--till she had made of him an ideal statesman and a man
worthy of all she had to give. A swift and gentle disenchantment was the
best that could be wished for her: so he told himself, but he did not
wish it. Time had not altogether changed him, and a woman's smile was to
him still a force in his life, as much as it had been, or almost, when
it led the boy of twenty-three to do all those rash and wrong things
long ago. He could not bear to shut the door: dreaming of impossible
transformations of obstinate facts, he drifted on, excusing himself for
doing nothing by telling himself that there was nothing he could do.

Mr. Kilshaw's information as to the Governor's attitude had not been
entirely incorrect, but, after an interview with the Premier, in which
the latter explained his action, Lord Eynesford did not feel that more
was required than a temperately expressed surprise and a hinted
disapproval of the course adopted. He declined his wife's invitation to
regard the matter in the most serious light, or to attribute any heinous
offence to the Premier, contenting himself with re