Then began for Thorndyke a week of rapture, mixed with agonising jealousy; for let no man suppose that his passions have no more power to trouble him after his hair grows scanty and his moustache grows grey. In all those years of separation from Constance, the edge of Thorndyke’s pain had been dulled, but the ache was still there; and from the April night he had first seen her, until then, he felt himself being steadily and securely mastered by that great love of his life--as steadily and securely as if he could have offered her his honest and devoted heart. And to be thrown with her daily--to spend the bright summer mornings in the cool, old drawing-room with Constance, listening to the pleasant, languid talk of people in a country house, the shady afternoons in driving over the rich, green, placid country, sometimes with Constance by his side--the deep, blue nights, sitting on the great stone porch, watching the silver moon rise over the distant pine-crowned mountain-peaks, and looking at Constance, in a thin white gown, seeming as young by night as in those sweet Italian nights long past--it would have been bliss but for two things. One was that she was as kind to Cathcart as to himself, and the other was that she was so very kind to him. For since she could not possibly think of marrying him, she could only be amusing herself at his expense. Thorndyke was nearly forty-five years old, he was a member of Congress, and reckoned a peculiarly cool-headed and long-headed man, but he was thereby exempt from the agonies of love. As for Senator Mulligan, Thorndyke did not need to recall the frank confession made on the train to know that Mince Pie had speedily made up his mind that Constance was worth the winning, and to go about it with promptness and energy. On the very last afternoon, Thorndyke, disgusted with the goodwill which Constance had shown Cathcart, retired to a rustic summer-house on the lawn, to writhe in secret with jealousy, and incidentally to read the New York newspapers. Presently he saw Constance and Senator Mulligan walking across the sward toward the house. Constance’s face was flushed, and she was walking rapidly. Senator Mulligan was talking earnestly to her, and his brogue was more evident than usual, under the stress of emotion. Immediately in front of the summer-house Constance stopped and faced the Senator. “I must beg of you,” she said, in a clear voice, with a faint ring of indignation in it, “to say no more on this subject to me now, or at any other time.”