But it is unlikely that any Tory of them all was more surprised by the change in the political aspect than Arthur Vaughan—when he came to think of it—by the position in which he had put himself. Certainly he had taken no step that was not revocable. He had said nothing positive; his honour was not engaged. But he had said a good deal. On the spur of the moment, moved by the strange attraction which the girl had for him, he had spoken after a fashion which only farther speech could justify. And then, not content with that, as if fortune were determined to make sport of his discretion, he had been led by another impulse—call it generosity, call it jealousy, call it what you will—to say more to Bob Flixton than he had said to her. He had done this who had hitherto held himself a little above the common run of men. Who had chalked out his career and never doubted that he had the strength to follow it. Who had not been content to wait, idle and dissipated, for a dead man’s shoes, but in the pride of a mind which he believed to be the master of his passions had set his face towards the high prizes of the senate and the forum. He, who if he could not be Fox, would be Erskine. Who would be anything, in a word, except the empty-headed man of pleasure, or the plain dullard satisfied to sit in a corner with a little. He, who had planned such a future, now found himself on the brink—ay, on the very point—of committing as foolish an act as the most thoughtless could commit. He was proposing to marry a girl below him in station, still farther below him in birth, whom he had only known three days, whom he had only seen three times! And all because she had beautiful eyes, and looked at him—Heavens, how she had looked at him! He went hot as he pictured her with her melting eyes, hanging towards him a little as the ivy inclines to the oak. And then he turned cold. And cold, he considered what he was going to do! Of course he was not going to marry her. No doubt he had said to her more than he had the right to say. But his honour was not engaged. The girl was not the worse for him; even if that which he had read in her eyes were true, she would get over it as quickly as he would. But marry her, give way to a feeling doubtless evanescent, let himself be swayed by a fancy at which he would laugh a year later—no! No! He was not so weak. He had not only his career to think of, but the family honours which would be his one day. What would old Vermuyden say if he impaled a baton sinister with the family arms, added a Smith to the family alliances, married the nameless, penniless teacher in a girls’ school?