He was not a good man. Such a life as he had led is a life that no man can lead with impunity. To say that he might still be capable of a generous action or unselfish impulse, would be to say much for him, given the story of his manhood. A great preacher of to-day has declared, that he could never believe the man who said he had never been tempted. For George Fairfax life had been crowded with temptations; and he had not made even the feeblest stand against the tempter. He had been an eminently fortunate man in all the trifles which make up the sum of a frivolous existence; and though his successes had been for the most part small social triumphs, they had not been the less agreeable. He had never felt the sting of failure until he stood in the Yorkshire orchard that chill October evening, and pleaded in vain to Clarissa Lovel. She was little more than a schoolgirl, and she rejected him. It was us if Lauzun, after having played fast-and-loose with that eldest daughter of France who was afterwards his wife, had been flouted by some milliner's apprentice, or made light of by an obscure little soubrette in Moliere's troop of comedians. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven this slight; and mingled with that blind unreasoning passion, which he had striven in vain to conquer, there was an ever-present sense of anger and wrong. When Clarissa rose from the bench, he rose too, and laid his hand lightly on her arm with a detaining gesture. "If you knew how long; I have been wishing for this meeting, you would not be so anxious to bring it to a close," he said earnestly. "It was very good of you to wish to tell me about poor Austin," she said, pretending to misunderstand him, "and I am really grateful. But I must not stay any longer away from my party." "Clarissa--a thousand pardons--Mrs. Granger"--there is no describing the expression he gave to the utterance of that last name--a veiled contempt and aversion that just stopped short of actual insolence, because it seemed involuntary--"why are you so hard upon me? You have confessed that you wanted to escape the noise yonder, and yet to avoid me you would go back to that. Am I so utterly obnoxious to you?" "You are not at all obnoxious to me; but I am really anxious to rejoin my party. My husband will begin to wonder what has become of me. Ah, there is my stepdaughter coming to look for me." Yes, there was Miss Granger, slowly advancing towards them. She had been quite in time to see George Fairfax's entreating gestures, his pleading air. She approached them with a countenance that would have been quite as appropriate to a genteel funeral--where any outward demonstration of grief would be in bad taste--as it was to Mr. Wooster's fete, a countenance expressive of a kind of dismal resignation to the burden of existence in a world that was unworthy of her.