natural spirits and self-confidence to think of this; indeed, his pride in his wife was the very apex of Rowland’s self-esteem and proud sense of having acquired everything that man could hope to acquire, and all by his own exertions and good judgment. He reflected to himself with satisfaction that he had owed nothing to anybody; that it was all his own doing, not only his success in life, _i. e._, the fortune he had made, but all those still more dazzling successes, which he could not have got had not the fortune been made. Nobody, for instance, had ever suggested Rosmore to him: no benevolent teacher, or other guide of youth, had pointed out to him the house with the white colonnade as an inspiring object and stimulus to ambition. Himself alone had been his counsellor. Nor had anybody indicated to him at the Station the pale and graceful woman who was Mrs. Stanhope’s dependent and poor friend. He had for himself found out and chosen both the wife and the house. This triumphant thought returning to his mind wiped out the impression of the morning, and even the recollection that he had gone out to hunt for society, and had--found it! He remembered this a little later with a sense that it was the best joke in the world. He had found it! Mrs. Dean had a “day,” as if she lived in a novel or Mayfair; and the neighbouring gentry and the sea-bathers, when they came in force, elated her soul as if they had been all out of the peerage. He wondered, with a laugh to himself, what Evelyn would say to Miss Eliza and the fat Mrs. Wedderburn, and went back to Rosmore in high glee, really oblivious for a time of the two “difficulties,” the irreconcilable portion of his new life, whom he had left there. CHAPTER XVI.