In truth Mary’s notion of the opinion which Arthur Vaughan had of her was above, rather than below, the reality. In her most despondent moments she scarcely exaggerated the things he thought of her, the contempt in which he held her, or the resentment which set his blood boiling when he remembered how she had treated him. He had gone to her and laid all that was left to him at her feet; and she, who had already dealt his fortunes so terrible a blow, had paid him for his unselfish offer, for his sacrifice of much that was dear to him, with suspicion, with contumely, with mistrust! Instead of clinging to him, to whom she had that moment plighted her troth, she had deserted him at a word. In place of trusting the man who had woo’d her in her poverty, she had believed the first whisper against him. She had shown herself heartless, faithless, inconstant as the wind—a very woman! And _Away, away—your smile’s a curse Oh, blot me from the race of men, Kind pitying Heaven! by death or worse_ _Before I love such things again!_ he might have murmured with a bitterness of which the author of the lines had been incapable. But then, Mr. Moore, though his poetry and his singing brought tears to the eyes of hardened women of fashion, had never lost at a blow a great estate, a high position, and his love. Certainly Vaughan had, if man ever had, grounds for a quarrel with fate. He had left London heart-whole and happy, the heir to a large fortune. He returned a fortnight later, a member of the Commons House indeed, but heart-sick and soured, beggared of his expectations and tortured by the thought of what might have been—if his love had proved true as she was fair, and constant as she was sweet. Fond dreams of her beauty still tormented him. Visions of the modest home in which he would have found consolation in failure, and smiles in success, rose up before him and derided him. He hated Sir Robert. He hated, or tried to hate, the weakest and the most despicable of women. He saw all things and all men with a jaundiced eye, the sound of his voice and the look of his face were altered. Men who knew him and who passed him in the street, or who saw him eating his chop in solitary churlishness, nudged one another and said that he took his reverses ill; while others, wounded by his curtness or his ill-humour, added that he did not go the right way to make the most of what was left.