And he had Benthall's assurance that the girl cared for him--that was something. Benthall was a man careful in the extreme as to what he said, and he would not have made such a statement where a girl was concerned, and that girl his own sister-in-law, unless he was tolerably certain of being right. His own sister-in-law; he had it then, of course, from Gertrude, who was Maude's second self, and would know all about it. It was satisfactory to know that there was a woman in the world who cared for him, and though without the smallest particle of vanity he accepted the belief very readily, for his rejection by Marian Ashurst and the indignity which he had suffered at her hands had by no means rendered him generally cynical or suspicious of the sex. Marian Ashurst! what an age ago it seemed since the days when the mention of that name would have sent the blood flowing in his cheek, and his heart thumping audibly, and now here he was staying in the old house where all the love scenes had taken place, walking round the garden where all the soft words had been spoken, all the vows made which she had thrown to the winds when the last parting, with what he then and for so long afterwards thought its never-to-be-forgotten agony, had occurred, and he had not felt one single extra palpitation. Mrs. Creswell was staying away from Woolgreaves just then, at some inland watering-place, for the benefit of her health, which it was said had suffered somewhat from her constant attendance on her husband, or Joyce might have met her. Such a meeting would not have caused him an emotion. When he had encountered her in the lane, during the canvassing time, there was yet lingering within his breast a remembrance of the great wrong she had done him, and that was fanned into additional fury by the nature of her request and the insolence with which she made it. But all those feelings had died out now, and were he then, he thought, to come across Marian Creswell's path, she would be to him as the merest stranger, and no more. If he were to marry, he knew of no one more likely to suit him in all ways than Maude. Pretty to look at, clever to talk to, sufficiently accustomed to him and his ways of life, she would make him a far better wife than nine-tenths of the young ladies he was accustomed to meet in such little society as he could spare the time to cultivate. Why should he marry at all? He answered the question almost as soon as he asked it. His life wanted brightening, wanted refining, was at present too narrow and confined; all his hopes, thoughts, and aspirations were centred on himself. He was all wrong. There should be some one who--the chambers were confoundedly dreary too, when he came home to them from the office or the House; he should travel somewhere abroad when the House rose, he thought, and it would be dull work moving about by himself, and--