Yet this poor passion--commonly so ridiculous, even more commonly, among the polite, held ill-bred--must be allowed its features of interest. It is remarkably alert, acute, ingenious, even laborious, in its sweeping of details into its net. It works up its brief very industriously, be the instructions never so meagre--somehow it invites legal metaphor, being always plaintiff in the court of sex, always with its grievance to prove, generally faced with singularly hard swearing in the witness box. It has its successes, as witnessed by notable phrases; there is the "unwritten law," and there are "extenuating circumstances." The phrases throw back a rather startling illumination on the sport of versifiers and the material of farce. But the exceptional cases have a trick of stamping themselves on phraseology. Most of us are jealous with no very momentous results. We grumble a little, watch a little, sulk a little, and decide that there is nothing in it. Often there is not. Likewise we are ambitious without convulsing the world--or even our own family circle. So with our lives, our loves, our deaths--history, poetry, elegy find no place for them. Only nature has and keeps a mother's love for the ordinary man, and holds his doings legitimate matter for her interest, nay, essential to her eternal unresting plan. She may be figured as investing the bulk of her fortune in him, as in three per cents.--genius being her occasional "flutter." Mark Wellgood was an ordinary man, and he was proud of the fact; that must, perhaps, be considered a circumstance of aggravation. He refused the suggestions of civilization to modify, and of sentiment to soften, his primitive instincts; he was proud of them just as they were. If any man had come between him and his woman--primitive also were the terms his thoughts used--that man should pay for it. If there were any man at all, who could it be but Harry Belfield? If it were Harry Belfield, Wellgood refused to hold him innocent of an inkling of how matters stood between Isobel and Vivien's father--he must have pretty nearly guessed, even if she had not told him. At least there were relations between Vivien herself and the suspected trespasser. Did they not give cause enough for a father's anger, deep and righteous, demanding vengeance? They gave cause--and they gave cover. The jealous suitor could use the indignant father's plea, the indignant father's weapons. The lover's revenge would make the father's duty sweet. He was not indifferent to the wrong done to Vivien; yet he almost prized it for the advantage it gave him in his own quarrel. It was not often that jealousy could plume itself on so honourable and so useful an ally!