Perhaps _others_, thought Maxwell, might not have served her so well. Perhaps _one_ of her maidens, with whom, as with the rest, loyalty was still the master passion, might be inclined to give him a welcome far warmer and kinder than her proud and distant farewell: might think she had judged him harshly, prematurely: might wish when it was too late that she had not so scornfully rejected his devotion, nay, might long to possess now what she had valued so lightly when it was her own. Then he would teach her a lesson that it would do her good to learn; then how delicious would be the triumph of meeting her coldly, politely, with calm friendship and quiet good-will, far more cutting than any amount of assumed indifference and unconcern; then she would know that she had altered her mind too late, that a man of energy and action was not to be pulled hither and thither like a puppet by the weak hand of a woman holding the string; that she had flung the falcon from her wrist once, jesses and all, and he would soar his wing now, and never stoop to lure of hers again. Oh! it would be a happy moment; and yet how much happier to forgive her freely, and without reproach to take her hand in his, look frankly in her face, and tell her he had loved her all along, even when she was most wilful and most unkind! Was he not a man--a bold strong man? What had he to do with pride as regarded her? Nay, was it not his pride to think that whilst he yielded an inch to no one else on earth, he would always be content to accept suffering, sorrow, even humiliation, for her dear sake? Such is the usual conclusion of one of those love reveries in which men indulge whilst under the influence of the malady; such is the climax of an infinity of stem resolution and haughty self-reproach and bitter self-examination; we make ourselves very unkind and very uncomfortable, and after all leave off very much at the point from which we started, if anything, in a less rational frame of mind than at first. Maxwell could not but compare himself at the moment to the horse of one of the leading files of his escort, which had got bogged up to the girths in a _well-head_, as those particularly soft pieces of morass are called, which abound on the Scottish moorland. The poor animal made two or three gallant efforts to extricate itself, stimulated not only by the great terror a horse entertains of such a catastrophe, but by a fierce application of its long-legged rider’s spurs; each plunge only hampered it more irrevocably, and at last amidst the loud jeers of his comrades and a volley of oaths from himself, the trooper abandoned the saddle and wisely allowed the beast to be still for a few moments and recover its wind.