On second thoughts, however, Lawrence concluded that a rainy day was worse for his prospects than a bright one.  If the sun shone, and everything was fair, Miss March might come across the grassy yard and might possibly stop before his open door to bid him good morning, and to tell him that she was sorry that a headache had prevented her from coming to play whist the evening before.  But this last, he presently admitted, was rather too much to expect, for he did not think she was subject to headaches, or to making excuses.  At any rate he might have caught sight of her, and if he had, he certainly would have called to her, and would have had his say with her, even had she persisted in standing six feet from the door-step.  But now this dreary day had shut his door and put an interdict upon strolls across the grass.  Therefore it was that he must resign any opportunity, for that day, at least, of soothing the harrowing perturbations of his passion by either the comforting warmth of hope, or by the deadening frigidity of a consummated despair.  This last, in truth, he did not expect, but still, if it came, it would be better than perturbations; they must be soothed at any cost.  But how to incur this cost was a difficult question altogether.  So, puffing, gazing into the fire, and knitting his brows, he sat and thought.

As a good-looking young man, as a well-dressed young man, as an educated and cultured man, as a man of the clubs, and of society, and, when occasion required, as a very sensible man of business, Mr Croft might be looked upon as essentially a commonplace personage, and in our walks abroad we meet a great many like him.  But there dwelt within him a certain disposition, which, at times, removed him to quite a distance from the arena in which commonplace people go through their prescribed performances.  He would come to a determination, generally quite suddenly, to attain a desired end in his own way, without any reference to traditionary or conventional methods; and the more original and startling these plans the better he liked it.

This disposition it was which made Lawrence read with so much interest the account of the defeated general who made the cavalry charge into the camp of his victorious enemy.  Defeat had been his, all through his short campaign, and it now seemed that the time had come to make another bold effort to get the better of his bad luck.  As he could not woo Miss March himself, he must get some one else to do it for him, or, if not actually to woo the lady, to get her at least into such a frame of mind that she would allow him to woo her, even in spite of his present disadvantages.  This would be a very bold stroke, but Lawrence put a good deal of faith in it.