yearns for. And from this situation there is nothing which can save a
man. He need not be a boy or a fool to be tormented despite himself;
the wisest and gravest are victims to these fits of heat and cold if
they have modesty and know somewhat of the game of chance called Life.
What may not happen to a castle left undefended; what may not be
filched from coffers left unlocked? This is the history of a man who,
despite the lavishness of Fortune and the gifts she had poured forth
before him, was of a stately humility. That he was a Duke and of great
estate, that he had already been caressed by the hand of Fame and had
been born more stalwart and beautiful than nine men of ten, did not,
to his mind, make sure for him the love of any woman whom he had not
served and won. He was of no meek spirit, but he had too much wit and
too great knowledge of the chances of warfare not to know that in
love's campaign, as in any other, a man must be on the field if he
would wield his sword.

So my lord Duke had his days of fret and restlessness as less fortunate
men have them, and being held on the Continent by duties he had
undertaken in calmer moments, lay sometimes awake at night reproaching
himself that he had left England. Such hours do not make a man grow
cooler, and by the time the second year had ripened, the months were
long indeed. Well as he had thought he knew himself, there were times
when the growth of this passion which possessed him awaked in him
somewhat of wonder. 'Twas for one with whom he had yet never exchanged
word or glance, a creature whose wild youth seemed sometimes a century
away from him. There had been so many others who had crossed his
path--great beauties and small ones--but only to this one had his being
cried out aloud.

"It has begun," he had said to himself. "I have heard them tell of
it--of how one woman's face came back to a man again and again, of how
her eyes would look into his and would not leave him or let him rest.
It has begun for me, too."

He had grave duties to perform, affairs of serious import to arrange,
interviews to hold with great personages and small, and though none
might read it in his bearing he found himself ever beholding this face,
ever followed by the eyes which would not leave him and which, had they
done so, would have left him to the dark. Yet this was hid within his
own breast and was his own strange secret which he gave himself up to
dwell upon but when he was alone. Wh