For he was an honourable man, brought up in an honourable school, where "a fair fight and no favour" had been the motto from time immemorial, and where any one taking undue advantage or seeking to compass his ends by unfair means toward his rival would have been scouted with ignominy. And he felt--how could he but feel?--that the struggle in which he was at that moment engaged was scarcely being conducted in the same open manner. He felt that he was creeping up towards the assault under the protection of a hireling guerilla force, which, with all the advantage of the knowledge of the ground, was pushing its renegade advantage, furthering his advance here, throwing out earthworks for the hindrance of the enemy there, and all from the mere sordid love of gain and chances of plunder, but without the smallest heartiness of feeling in the matter. Not a nice feeling for a man of Robert Streightley's sense of punctilio. It galled him, and he chafed against it sadly during the long watches of that night. What was it? a caprice, a sudden fancy, a madness which had stung him,--that he, a mature man of confirmed bachelor habits, with his own household gods around him, and his own life completely settled and hitherto sufficient, should suddenly break through all his customs--yes, that would be nothing, but break through them in a weak and feeble manner--break through them in a way in which he, so far as he read it to himself, took no active part, but suffered himself to be the mere tool and instrument--for his own purposes indeed--in hands which were certainly not exempt from suspicion of being soiled. This was bad, very bad indeed. What should he say to himself suppose a parallel case in the business world--that world which he understood, which had hitherto been his sole life, and out of which he felt he could not with safety emerge--had been submitted to him? Why, he would have declared that, as a point of honour, a man in that position ought at once to set himself free from such trammels. And if in business, surely in love there was all the more reason for his doing so. For his part he would hesitate no longer; he would at once drop the Guyon acquaintance, sinking the advances which he had up to that point made to Mr. Guyon, and writing them off as salutary experience lightly paid for, and---- And then, as he lay tossing on his fevered pillow, rose before him a vision of Katharine in all her grace and beauty--Katharine saucily laughing at Mr. Mostyn's solemn vanity; Katharine the cynosure of all at the Botanical promenade, queening it amongst the loveliest and the best-bred, evoking admiration from all; Katharine with earnest face and downcast eyes, then with flushed cheek and sparkling glance, in conversation with Gordon Frere--No! that last thought was too much. In Robert Streightley's nature there lay hitherto latent an amount of mad, blinding, unreasoning jealousy, whose existence was suspected by none of his friends, by him least of