The Apple may be crude or withered, and scarcely worth the plucking; but if the fatal legend be once visible on its rind, you will see divine eyes glitter with something more than eagerness; and even chaste, cold Pallas may not repress a jealous pang, when the prize is laid in Aphrodite's rosy palm. If it had been a question of keeping faith with Alan Wyverne, Miss Vavasour would not have wasted one thought or one regret on the present triumph or the splendid future; but knowing that they were separated for ever and ever, she was inclined to try if "the pomps and vanities of this wicked world" could not make some amends for what she had lost. She would not suppose it possible that a new affection could ever replace the passionate love that had been crushed and thwarted, but which would not die. There was her great mistake. It is in our early years that we ought to be patient; but we never recognize this till we are old: we hope while we are young, but we will not wait. So Helen accepted Clydesdale's saturnine devotion, on the whole rather graciously; her haughty, wayward temper, which would break out at times, rather attracted than repelled him. It soon began to be noised abroad that the Great Fish was firmly hooked, if not landed. Certain astute chaperons acknowledged, with a sigh, that it was time to desist from a futile pursuit, and to seek humbler and more available victims. Dudley Delamere, the Earl's heir presumptive, who had nourished wild hopes of succession, on the strength of his cousin's notorious habits of self-indulgence, came down to the Foreign Office, two mornings running, with whiskers uncurled, thereby intimating prostration and despair as plainly as if he had rent his perfect garments, or scattered ashes on his comely head. "I won't fight any longer," he said, plaintively; "the luck's too dead against me. Throw up the sponge; the Begum has won it fairly."