in that quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued from that
pleasure in the exercise of a wily intellect which impels schemers and
politicians to an activity for which, without that pleasure itself,
there would seem no adequate inducement. And besides, the ruling passion
of this petty sovereign was power; and if knowledge be power, there is
no better instrument of power over a contumacious subject than that hold
on his heart which is gained in the knowledge of its secret.

But "secret"! Had it really come to this? Was it possible that the mere
sight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the whole
tenor of my life,--a stranger of whose mind and character I knew
nothing, whose very voice I had never heard? It was only by the
intolerable pang of anguish that had rent my heart in the words,
carelessly, abruptly spoken, "if she were to die," that I had felt how
the world would be changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it no
more! Yes, secret it was no longer to myself, I loved! And like all on
whom love descends, sometimes softly, slowly, with the gradual wing of
the cushat settling down into its nest, sometimes with the swoop of the
eagle on his unsuspecting quarry, I believed that none ever before loved
as I loved; that such love was an abnormal wonder, made solely for
me, and I for it. Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and more
turbulent thoughts, as my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of Lilian's
home, and the shimmering silver of the moonlit willow, under which I had
seen her gazing into the roseate heavens.

CHAPTER VIII.

When I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evidently about to
break up. Those who had grouped round the piano were now assembled round
the refreshment-table. The cardplayers had risen, and were settling or
discussing gains and losses. While I was searching for my hat, which
I had somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doloureux,
crept timidly up to me,--the proudest and the poorest of all the
hidalgos settled on the Hill. He could not afford a fee for a
physician's advice; but pain had humbled his pride, and I saw at a
glance that he was considering how to take a surreptitious advantage of
social intercourse, and obtain the advice without paying the fee. The
old man discovered the hat before I did, stooped, took it up, extended
it to me with the profound bow of the old school, while the other hand,
clenched and quivering, was pressed in