But all the time he was keenly aware of the magnet that drew him to the South. Each careless, friendly letter of Jill's increased his desire to see her. In Scotland he had met Cydonia, through a mischievous trick of Lady Leason's. But his old infatuation was dead. He could find no lingering charm about her. Marriage had changed her whole outlook. For, with it, ambition seemed to have flowered, a late but very vigorous plant, to the absorption of her nature. More serious, more composed, she had that solid wedded look which marks a certain type of blonde, even in girlhood statuesque. She ordered her little husband about with a regal calm, and entertained loftily her numerous guests, among whom the clergy were freely sprinkled. McTaggart found her heavy and dull and refused her pressing invitation to a week-end party, with a smile, realizing that he owed it alone to the change in his fortunes. In the background of the historic Castle that the Flemmings had taken for the Summer Mrs. Cadell hovered, restless; superintending domestic details with a stern eye on her husband, when he turned up from time to time, a social trial to the guests. Euan Flemming reminded McTaggart of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. With his nervous manner and neat dress he seemed to exist in perpetual fear of offending those useful political props whom Cydonia collected on his behalf. "Euan," she told her mother one day, "always talks to the wrong people. So now I have invented a sign which he understands and when I use it he moves on to another guest. It's really very tiresome of him! At the party I gave for the Premier he was lost to view for over an hour and I found him in the library showing his books to a struggling author and discussing a new method of binding!" When he compared Cydonia with Jill at the luncheon party to which Lady Leason had invited the Flemmings during his visit, McTaggart wondered not a little at this love affair of his youth. Even during the dinner that followed at the Castle, in all the magnificence of her surroundings, Cydonia left him shrewdly amused and indifferent. He told himself that here again was a proof of the depths of his love for Jill. Neither Fantine nor Mrs. Flemming could add a beat to his steady pulse. At North Berwick a new temptation awaited him in his host's sister, one of the most beautiful girls he had seen for many a long year. But, although daily opportunities for flirtation offered themselves to the pair, McTaggart reaped no advantage from them. They parted in firm but simple friendship. Surely he knew his heart at last?--that vagrant double heart of his! No other woman could reign in it, side by side with his little Jill. He loved her. And he felt afraid--a new experience for McTaggart! He began to fear that the sunny weeks by the sea might hold some dangerous rival; procrastination prove his undoing.