He gave a kind of unconscious despairing gesture. Was there some devil in his soul whom he was bound to wrestle with by fasting and prayer, and conquer in the end? Or was it an angel that had entered there, before whose heavenly aspect he must kneel and succumb? Why this new and appalling loneliness which had struck himself and his home-surroundings as with an earthquake shock, shaking the foundations of all that had seemed so safe and secure? Why this feverish restlessness in his mind, which forbade him to occupy himself with any of the work waiting for him to do, and which made him unhappy and ill at ease for no visible or reasonable cause? He walked slowly across the lawn to his favourite seat under the apple-tree,--and there, beneath the scented fruiting boughs, with the evening dews gathering on the grass at his feet, he tried manfully to face the problem that troubled his own inner consciousness. "Let me brave it out!" he said--"Let me realise and master the thoughts that seek to master ME, otherwise I am no man, but merely a straw to be caught by the idle wind of an emotion. Why should I shirk the analysis of what I feel to be true of myself? For, after all, it is only a weakness of nature,--a sense of regret and loss,-- a knowledge of something I have missed in life,--all surely pardonable if quelled in the beginning. She,--Maryllia Vancourt--is only at woman,--I am only a man. There is more than at first seems apparent in that simple qualification 'only'! She, the woman, has charm, and is instinctively conscious of her power, as why should she not be?--she has tried it, and found it no doubt in every case effectual. I, the man, am long past the fervours and frenzies of life,--and charm, whether it be hers or that of any other of her sex, should have, or ought to have, no effect upon me, particularly in my vocation, and with my settled habits. If I am so easily moved as to be conscious of a certain strange glamour and fascination in this girl,--for she is a girl to me, nay almost a child,--that is not her fault, but mine. As well expect the sun not to shine or a bird not to sing, as expect Maryllia Vancourt not to smile and look sweet! Walking with her in her rose-garden, where she took me with such a pretty air of confiding grace, to show me her border of old French damask roses, I listened to her half-serious, sometimes playful talk as in a dream, and answered her kindly questions concerning some of the sick and poor in the village as best I could, though I fear I must occasionally have spoken at random. Oh, those old French damask roses! I have known them growing in that border for years,--yet I never saw them as I saw them to-day,--never looked they so darkly red and glowing!--so large and open-hearted! I fancy I shall smell their fragrance all my life! 'Are they doing well, do you think?'--she said, and the little white chin perked up from under the pink ribbon which tied her hat, and the dark blue eyes