“I do not think I ever thought about it,” he answers bluntly. “If I had, I should have taken for granted that unselfishness included all the others.” “How?” “Well, take pluck for instance. If a man were perfectly unselfish, he would never cast a thought to his own skin.” “I do not at all agree with you,” rejoins she, almost rudely. “There is no relation whatever between them: the one is the loftiest of moral qualities; the other is purely physical, a mere matter of nerves and muscles, and beef and beer.” He lies looking at her in puzzled pain, jaded with the effort to follow the windings of her inexplicable mood. “You will wonder what is the motive of this flat tirade,” she says with a laugh that has neither mirth nor music in it. “I must explain that I have had one more proof that Rupert is the most selfless being God ever created.” Binning takes the wind out of her sails. “He gave me that impression;” and the only net result of the expiation is to put them both out of spirits and temper for the rest of the evening. CHAPTER XV The 28th of May has come, and the inevitable has happened. This inevitable is not that Lavinia Carew has become Lavinia Campion. On the contrary, her wedding stands postponed for a week, viz. to the 4th of June. The delay is in no degree attributable to her, but is caused by the illness of that uncle whose over-haste to be well, and determination to treat serious sickness with that high hand which it will never endure, has landed him in the same morass as it had done Féodorovna. With a reluctance proportioned to his extravagant eagerness for the object in view, with many racy expressions, and a refreshing shower of renewed insults, both wholesale and retail, distilling upon his patient son, Sir George has had to acquiesce in the deferring for an additional eight days of the attainment of his heart’s desire.