Standing on the threshold of life as she does, she may be a little too eager to prove that she is fit for the game, fit for the thrills and throbs of the great melodrama. Out of sheer anxiety therefore, without any genuine desire to gratify a passion, but simply with the view of giving her self-esteem the proof that she is mature, she may behave very much as if her heart and passions were involved. And though, in later life, she may develop into a supremely desirable woman, she behaves for the nonce very much like those deplorable people who in all they think and do are actuated by vanity alone. The dupe in such cases, the fool in such cases, the creature who, owing to his gross misunderstanding of the situation, allows himself to be persuaded by his vanity that he has stimulated _une grande passion_ in an unbroken filly, naturally deserves all he gets. Unfortunately, as the world is at present constituted, his punishment, like that of the modern co-respondent, always falls short of its proper severity. Now Denis Malster was certainly no fool,--nay, he was probably above the average in intelligence; and yet the speed with which he had succeeded in monopolising Leonetta's attention made him feel in his gratified vanity, so immensely grateful to the girl, that willy-nilly, he found himself drifting all too pleasantly along that warm and intoxicating stream that the nineteenth century called "Love," without feeling either the obligation or even the desire to realise calmly and dispassionately what had actually happened. Quite recently she had even allowed him to kiss her. It was unspeakable bliss, almost distressing in its transcendent quality. He "had such joy of kissing her," he "had small care to sleep or feed. For the joy to kiss between her brows time upon time" he "was well-nigh dead." How could he be deceived by such unequivocal demonstrations of real passion? In any case it was too wonderful to be wrong, and if wrong--what then? The Devil was worth a score of heavens! He had not carelessly overlooked the other sister. He was not absent-minded where she was concerned. He had resolutely cast her out of his mind. With conscious deliberation he had banished her far beyond his horizon. His only remaining difficulty was not to discover the nature of his next step, but how to take it. He felt an irrevocable destiny bidding him solicit Leonetta's hand, but he rightly foresaw that there might be some difficulty where Mrs. Delarayne was concerned. It was because he happened to be in this mood of conscienceless desire, unreflecting longing, that he had been able to listen calmly at the table, the day before, while Wilmott announced Cleopatra's fall. Dimly he had connected his behaviour with her indisposition; but the temptation to continue along his present lines was too great to allow him to dwell profitably upon that aspect of the situation.