Fortunate for the great affairs of the house of Abbott, that the senior was particularly well at this time! The heir, for all his self-control, was in a state of mind which, had he been compelled to return--and nothing short of his father’s death or a financial panic would have drawn him across the seas--would have lost him the faith of Wall Street. Since his violent attack of calf-love and the strange illuminations which had succeeded it, he had looked upon woman with a critical eye, and treasured his inmost feelings with a jealous care. Never again, he had determined long since, would he go through that futile agony at the instance of anything less than death; when he found the one woman whom he could love more than his life or his ambitions--or as well--then would he pour all he had husbanded at her feet; but he would have her unless the Almighty himself intervened. Busy as was his life, he had been sharply aware of its incompleteness; there had been many hours of longing for the deep companionship of love, for the perfection of his own soul and manhood. The vague ideal of his dreams he had not recognized in Ranata’s physical part when they met in the cottage, his sense of adventure being keener than any vital longing, and the fury of the dance excluding mental knowledge of his partner. But he had discovered her not long after; and the great measure that he had to offer of homage and love and passion had since burned steadily; with a less strong brain the flame would have been less steady, and the rare moments of solitude with her, and their temptations, might have overwhelmed him: he had never imagined a woman who could so crowd into a moment the concentrated essence of all the melting tenderness and the passionate energy that made up the surrender of woman. It is true that more than once the temptation had assailed him to use her weakness as the shortest way out of the difficulties that beset him; but not only had he so far never taken advantage of any one but a scoundrel, and did he still hold women in an old-fashioned reverence, but he forecast the weeks--perhaps months--asunder, when in desperation she might marry any prince her father selected. And in his cooler moments he tingled at the thought of a victory which would be as great for his young country as for himself, of being the chosen instrument to initiate a new order of things as inevitable as the progress of the world. Romantic as he was, the campaign he had planned--where the only weapons should be his own wit and the millions which the world, with its curious love of self-delusion, affects to despise, typifying as they do modern life itself--appealed to him more powerfully than a flight across a picturesque country of many costumes to his yacht, or a rescue from the palace of Buda. But at present he was not rehearsing his plan of campaign; the coming moment commanded his imagination, and the blood was beginning to pound in his ears when he heard the light rustle of