Even now he could not recall, without wincing, the interview he had had on that occasion with his father's friend. During that interview Carden had felt himself thoroughly condemned, and even despised, by the older man, and he had been made to feel that it was only for the sake of his father--his high-minded, unsuspicious father--that he was being saved from the public exposure of a peculiarly sordid divorce suit. But it was in all sincerity that the young man now felt indignant with Major Lane for having distressed such a delicately spiritual soul as was Thomas Carden with the hidden details of the Jarvice story. After all, what interested the public was not the question of Jarvice's moral character, but whether a gently nurtured and attractive woman had carried through a sinister and ingenious crime, which, but for a mere accident, would have utterly defied detection. Theodore Carden got up from the breakfast table and walked over to a circular bow window which commanded charming views of the wide sloping garden, interspersed with the streams and tiny ponds, which gave the house its name of Watermead, and which enabled old Mr. Carden to indulge himself with especial ease in his hobby of water gardening. Standing there, the young man began wondering what he should do with himself this early spring day. His _fiancée_ had just left the quiet lodgings, which she and her mother, a clergyman's widow, had occupied in Birmingham during the last few weeks, to pay visits to relatives in the south of England. The thought of going to any of the neighbouring houses where he knew himself to be sure of a warm welcome, and where the news of his engagement would be received with boisterous congratulations, tempered in some cases with an underlying touch of regret and astonishment, filled him with repugnance. The girl he had chosen to be his wife was absolutely different from the women who had hitherto attracted him; he reverenced as well as loved her, and hitherto Theodore Carden had never found reverence to be in any sense a corollary of passion, while he had judged women by those who were attractive to, or, as was quite as often the case, attracted by, himself. The last few days had brought a great change in his life, and one which he meant should be permanent; and yet, in spite or perhaps because of this, as he stood staring with absent eyes into his father's charming garden, he found his mind dwelling persistently on the only one of his many amorous adventures which had left a deep, an enduring, and, it must be admitted, a most delightful mark on the tablets of his memory. The whole thing was still so vivid to him that half-involuntarily he turned round and looked down the long room to where his old father was sitting. How amazed, above all how shocked and indignant, the man for whom he had so great an affection and respect would feel if he knew the pictures which were now floating before his son's retrospective vision!