deceive, to gamble, to excess in drink and the like cannot approach a certain order of mind. But the craving for knowledge and a fuller life--either in a spiritual or the human way--is implanted ineradicably in every soul, and while it may rest inert and seem nullified in a kind of apathy, the craving is there--to be aroused surely enough at some dangerous hour. And of all the dangerous hours in life, the hour of disappointed love is the most critical. Calm spectators of mortal folly who have been satisfactorily married for twenty years and more, who have sons to provide for and daughters to establish, cherish a disdain of love-stories and boast that they have no patience with morbidity. Love--which put them into being and keeps the earth in existence--seems to all such a silly malady peculiar to the sentimental in early youth. So they put the First Cause--in one of its many manifestations--in the waste-paper basket, asking each other what will become of Charles if he cannot find a rich wife, and poor Alice, if she cannot entrap a suitable husband. But there are others who look on life with some hope of understanding it truly, in part, at any rate, and these know, perhaps by experience, perhaps by sympathy, that whereas bodily disturbances may pass away leaving little or no effect upon the general health, all mental tumults are perpetual in their consequences: they never die out entirely, and they live, sometimes with appalling energy, sometimes with gnawing listlessness, to the end of an existence. Robert, in the judgment of his intellect and his senses, had found his ideal. Brigit did not belong to "the despised day of small things"; she was the woman of his imagination--the well-beloved, and having gained her, was he to say--Farewell? It seemed so. Meanwhile, the graceful, swaying dialogue rippled between the players on the stage; the smiling audience, hushed with interest, gazed at the delightful beings before them; the exquisite Marquise had uttered her two last speeches-- "_Je ne croyois pas l'amitié si dangereuse._" and-- "_Je ne me mêle plus de rien!_" Lubin brought the performance to an end by the final utterance-- "_Allons de la joie!_" The curtain fell--to rise again a dozen times. Orange did not hear the door of the box being opened. Prince d'Alchingen came in and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "Would you like to see her?" he whispered. "I can arrange it. No one need know." But the training of a lifetime and constant habits of thought were stronger still than any mood. "No," said Robert, shortly, "I won't see her. I must get back to London at once." CHAPTER XXVIII The Prince looked at him in astonishment. "You can't get to London to-night," said he; "there are no trains." "I can walk." "It is thirty-five miles." "I am accustomed to long walks." "At any rate you will have some supper first--in my little breakfast-room. Don't refuse, because I want you to meet Castrillon."