In the silent watches of the night--disturbed but twice, once by Miss Pepperdine with more medicine, and once by Miss Judith with nothing but solicitude--he realised the entire situation. Haidee had dawned upon him, and the Thing was begun which made all poets mighty. He would be miserable, but he would be great. She was a high-born maiden, who sat in the pews of earls, and he was--he was not exactly sure what he was. She would doubtless look upon him with scorn: well, he would make the world ring with his name and fame; he would die in a cloud of glory, fighting for some oppressed nation, as Byron did, and then she would be sorry, and possibly weep for him. By eleven o’clock he felt as if he had been in love all his life; by midnight he was asleep and dreaming that Haidee was locked up in a castle on the Rhine, and that he had sworn to release her and carry her away to liberty and love. He woke early next morning, and wrote some verses in the metre and style of my Lord Byron’s famous address to a maiden of Athens; by breakfast-time he knew them by heart. It was all in accordance with the decrees of Fate that Lucian and Haidee were quickly brought into each other’s company. Two days after the interchange of glances in the church porch the boy rushed into the dining-room at the vicarage one afternoon, and found himself confronted by a group of persons, of whom he for the first bewildering moment recognised but one. When he realised that the earth was not going to open and swallow him, and that he could not escape without shame, he saw that the Earl of Simonstower, Mrs. Brinklow, Mr. Chilverstone, and Sprats were in the room as well as Haidee. It was fortunate that Mrs. Brinklow, who had an eye for masculine beauty and admired pretty boys, took a great fancy to him, and immediately began to pet him in a manner which he bitterly resented. That cooled him, and gave him self-possession. He contrived to extricate himself from her caresses with dignity, and replied to the questions which the earl put to him about his studies with modesty and courage. Sprats conducted Haidee to the garden to inspect her collection of animals; Lucian went with them, and became painfully aware that for every glance which he and Haidee bestowed on rabbits, white mice, piebald rats, and guinea-pigs, they gave two to each other. Each glance acted like an electric thrill--it seemed to Lucian that she was the very spirit of love, made flesh for him to worship. Sprats, however, had an opinion of Miss Brinklow which was diametrically opposed to his own, and she expressed it with great freedom. On any other occasion he would have quarrelled with her: the shame and modesty of love kept him silent; he dared not defend his lady against one of her own sex.