He had so much the less forgotten her. The feelings of warm admiration, chivalrous respect, and tender affection which he had hitherto felt for her, suddenly leaped up in a quicker flame--he loved her. From feeling convinced that to have her as his wife would be a good and a happy thing for him, he had become determined that one day she should be his wife; she and no other. From that time she had remained for him as a sort of standard, an ideal of womanhood; gentle-spirited, true, and pure, wise and prudent, sweet and modest. He had judged all other women by this standard, and had never felt anything more than a certain admiration for any woman since his parting from Adrienne. Then had ensued his return home, his not very satisfactory relations with his mother, the distress amongst his people, the necessity for prompt action and hard work, his introduction to Helena Spenceley, his sudden, unexpected meeting with Adrienne, and the eager conviction that now she soon must, should be his. Beside Helena’s brilliant beauty, the delicate grace of Adrienne was as the beauty of a white violet compared with a crimson rose. Helena was dazzlingly beautiful, but she was the exact opposite of all which he had been for three years praising and exalting to himself as best and sweetest and most desirable in woman. He thought a good deal of Helena. She was younger than Adrienne, wilder, less educated, prejudiced, hot-headed, violent, and bewitching. ‘Yes, she must be bewitching,’ argued Sebastian, with exquisite _naïveté_, within himself. ‘Look at Hugo. The lad was enraptured with her.’ That was to be expected. Hugo was young too; he had not loved Adrienne Blisset for three years. Sebastian had the steady purpose and intention of asking Adrienne to marry him, to honour him and make him happy by becoming his wife. When? As soon as he could find the opportunity, he said to himself. But it never did come. He could not understand how it was, that, though he saw Adrienne repeatedly and alone, though she was amiable, cordial, pleasant, yet he could never get that question asked. Adrienne’s behaviour puzzled him. He could have sworn that once she loved him. When he was with her, Myles Heywood’s handsome olive-hued face, with its scornful lips and defiant eyes, seemed always to be hovering there between her and him. And yet, on the one occasion on which he had seen them together, Myles had looked and behaved as if he were as far as possible from being anything like a favoured lover, thought Sebastian, with an odd sensation of jealousy and pain. No; it was only opportunity for which he waited, an opportunity which seemed as if it would never come. Certainly it had not been there that evening. He walked home lost in profound speculations, thinking of Adrienne’s lifted head and flashing eyes, and of how Myles Heywood had been ‘very stiff indeed’ with poor old Wilson that morning. CHAPTER III.