Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few minutes. In proportion as he realized an evening with his ancient admirers he was restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not giving banquets and Balls, instead of making a solitude about himself and his bride. For solitude, thought he, is good for the man, the man being a creature consumed by passion; woman's love, on the contrary, will only be nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes of others, she having no passion of her own, but simply an instinct driving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired, most shining. So thinking, he determined to change his course of conduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom drawn directly from experience there is a mental intoxication that cancels the old world and establishes a new one, not allowing us to ask whether it is too late. CHAPTER XXX TREATING OF THE DINNER-PARTY AT MRS. MOUNTSTUART JENKINSON'S Vernon and young Crossjay had tolerably steady work together for a couple of hours, varied by the arrival of a plate of meat on a tray for the master, and some interrogations put to him from time to time by the boy in reference to Miss Middleton. Crossjay made the discovery that if he abstained from alluding to Miss Middleton's beauty he might water his dusty path with her name nearly as much as he liked. Mention of her beauty incurred a reprimand. On the first occasion his master was wistful. "Isn't she glorious!" Crossjay fancied he had started a sovereign receipt for blessed deviations. He tried it again, but paedagogue-thunder broke over his head. "Yes, only I can't understand what she means, Mr. Whitford," he excused himself "First I was not to tell; I know I wasn't, because she said so; she quite as good as said so. Her last words were: 'Mind, Crossjay, you know nothing about me', when I stuck to that beast of a tramp, who's a 'walking moral,' and gets money out of people by snuffling it." "Attend to your lesson, or you'll be one," said Vernon. "Yes, but, Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell. I'm to answer straight out to every question." "Miss Middleton is anxious that you should be truthful." "Yes; but in the morning she told me not to tell." "She was in a hurry. She has it on her conscience that you may have misunderstood her, and she wishes you never to be guilty of an untruth, least of all on her account." Crossjay committed an unspoken resolution to the air in a violent sigh: "Ah!" and said: "If I were sure!" "Do as she bids you, my boy." "But I don't know what it is she wants." "Hold to her last words to you." "So I do. If she told me to run till I dropped, on I'd go." "She told you to study your lessons; do that." Crossjay buckled to his book, invigorated by an imagination of his liege lady on the page.