As may be inferred from the characters of the parties concerned and the circumstances in which they were situated, this first debate proved but the prologue to a gradual and more intimate acquaintanceship. Callydon was an amiable place, and the proclivities of its visitors were so familiar that no ill-natured criticisms were passed on ultra-Platonic friendships. Ophelia Strong was glad of the man’s countenance. When a woman’s vanity has conceived itself injured by fate, she is in a mood ripe for sympathies that can salve her smarting spirit. Nothing pleases her better than being able to hint at her woes to a friend of the opposite sex whose discretion had been matured by intimate contact with the world. It is the old fable of the child playing with fire, the inherent mischief of human nature experimenting with the morbid excitements of the more passionate affairs of the heart. However innocent be the delusion, the forbidden fruit glows amid the green leaves and the antique dragon lies grinning in the grass. James Maltravers was a diplomat of a high psychological order. As a lover, he believed in dramaticisms of an elevated type, tragedy of a picturesque nature, moralities staged to a full orchestral accompaniment. He had studied the methods of certain up-to-date play-wrights, and had come to the conclusion that nothing impresses a woman more than the idea that a man is suffering untold ethical torments by reason of the inevitable fascination of her beauty. The picture of a moral hero struggling in the coils of love impressed him vividly with a sense of dramatic power. Such a conviction bade fair to shine with glorious persuasiveness before the fine vanity of the feminine soul. Paolo burning upon the grid of fate. In due course he adopted an air of dejected melancholy in Ophelia’s presence, looked at her with sad, saturnine eyes, and seemed like a wounded stag too conscious of the barb. His conversation was often philosophical and pitched to a most elevating refrain. He looked blank verse even to the last tragic cadence of a monologue under the stars. He made much of chivalry; the subject served him well. It was a glittering cloak, a fine robe of tinsel and glass to ape majesty. It suited the man’s part with distinction. Maltravers went about on moral buskins, and was altogether a very impressive and romantic figure. XIX