What chance would he or any other man have with that particular girl? Even if she were well disposed in regard to him, what would that amount to in the face of the experience which had been hers? Had she not had enough experience of men, and of marrying, to last her for some time at any rate, if not for the rest of her life? And was he, Jack Wingfield, the sort of man who would tempt that girl into a second adventure? In spite of his recent successes--at tennis and in his own Augean dairy--he had not got out of his old habit of thinking slightingly of himself and the possibility of his reaching to any high level of attainment. What he had achieved the day before he had achieved through her. He placed it to her credit without any reservation--he did not deduct even the customary commission which should have accrued to him as an agent. And when she had shown herself to be strong enough to make him do all that he had done, was she likely to be weak enough to listen to his prayer? All this form of reflection was very disheartening to him. He was a very different man indeed from the one who had taken part in those fancy flights on the terrace before the dawn, when he had put his cheek down to that cushion where he had pictured her head to be lying. “Lord, what a bounder!” was the thought that came to him from that reflection now. In the course of his reflections he did not even get so far as his mother had gone, when she had thought that, let the worst come to the worst--the best to the best was how he would have put it--a full year was bound to pass before he could have her with him. There was no need for him to draw upon so distant a source of uneasiness when there were so many others to supply him close at hand. His mother never came down to breakfast, but he invariably went to her room to bid her good morning. He thought that now she looked at him narrowly, and he had an intuition that by some means she had come to know of his late hours on the terrace, so like a sensible man, who confesses when he knows he has been found out, he said cheerily: “I had rather a bad night. I went out upon the terrace when you left me, and, by George! it was dawn--almost daylight--before I got to bed.” “That was very foolish of you, Jack,” said she. “But I suppose you were thinking about--about--something of importance.” “That was it,” he assented, with the glibness of the accomplished liar, though he was not a liar but only a lover. “That was it: I was wondering if I had not been a bit too hasty with Verrall. Perhaps I should give him another chance. Well, well; a chap doesn’t like starting life at home by kicking out a man who has been about the place for so long as Verrall has been. Oh, yes; I had a lot to think over. Well, wish me luck.” “Wish you luck, dear--how?” said the mother. “How? Don’t you know that I am down to play some giants to-day, and won’t you wish your little Jack--Jack the giant killer--the best of luck?”