He gazed at them as they sat together with a sudden comprehension, a curious self-compassion and sense of envy. He laughed to himself softly, so softly that it did not sound in the quiet evening air, with that amusement which is everybody's first impulse at sight of a pair of lovers: and then he grew suddenly grave. This was very different from what he was contemplating for himself. He had thought of duty, not of happiness, in all his recent plans. It had been a something incumbent upon him to fulfil, a wrong to atone for, a blunder to set right, that had been his inspiration. Perhaps his foreign breeding was responsible for the fact that Lewis had not looked upon the marriage which he thought it right to make as having much to do with his happiness at all. It was a portion of life, a necessity, like another, to be accepted manfully, but not the great and crowning want of youth, not the turning-point of existence. Romance was not in it to his straightforward views: and he was not unwilling to accept Miss Jean for the partner of his life, even had she been less pleasant than he found her. He would have approached even Miss Margaret in the same spirit, and with the same dauntless simplicity, had that been the right thing to do, and would have done his duty by either without any sense of hardship or even regret. But when he saw Philip Stormont and Katie, something awoke in him which was like a new sense. Oh, yes, he had heard of love, he had read of it; there was not a novel without it, and scarcely a song. He had seen lovers before now. But somehow this soft and lingering eve, the novelty of all around him, the resolution he had taken, even the satirical advice of Mrs. Stormont, and her suggestion that he had but to pick and choose, were all working together in his mind.