Mr Carisbrooke told a curious instance of thought transference in a pair of lovers, and told it very well. Amethyst listened with great interest, and perhaps chose to make her interest apparent, though Sir Richard repressed his impatience with difficulty. When she found herself alone in her room that night, she stood for a moment and looked at herself in the glass. Why had she been so kind to Sylvester Riddell, when she had so much cause for righteous anger against him? Somehow, he belonged so much to days when she had felt kindly to every one, that she had forgotten to be unkind. Yet he could look at her as he had done to-night, and think of her--what he had made Lucian believe! "All for my beauty!" she said to herself. "I despise him for it!" she exclaimed, half aloud. "He ought to scorn me!" But before she went to bed, she finished his poem. It vexed and dissatisfied her. It did not seem that the hero had managed to combine success in life with the search after, much less with the possession of, Iris. And Amethyst was finding that success in life _was_ a very good thing. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. THE FLAMING SWORD. Amethyst held many more conversations with Oliver Carisbrooke during the next few weeks, with the result that a distinct, though peculiar, relation was established between them. He was the only person she ever met--Sylvester of course having returned to Oxbridge--who had any intellectual interests, and Amethyst had so vigorous and inquiring a mind, that even fashion and frivolity could not stifle it. He gave her to understand that he was quite outside the ranks of her suitors, and only aspired to a rational friendship, and flattery of her intelligence was so much rarer, and less a matter of course, than flattery of her beauty, that it had a greater charm. He afforded an outlet to that side of her nature which could not be satisfied with the splendid outside of life. The world was pressing hard on her soul. What had she come to London for, but to make a great marriage? Her family had made sacrifices for it, her acquaintances looked out for it, she herself intended it. Every day made her engagement to Sir Richard Grattan more inevitable. She liked him very well, she knew that she could make the position that he offered to her splendid, she believed that she should be happy in it, and yet she was buying it at the cost of the divine spark within her which was her very self. She believed that romantic love was over for her, and that she was no longer the kind of person to whom religion could be an inspiring enthusiasm, though she did find in it a standard below which she did not mean to fall. She thought that she had outgrown a great deal in her short life.