a middle-aged devotion, and bore the same resemblance to the picturesque passion of five-and-twenty that a snow-fed torrent does to a navigable river.  The one rushes and roars and sweeps away the bridges and devastates happy homes, while the other bears upon its placid breast the argosies of peace and plenty and is generally serviceable to the necessities of man.  Still, there is something attractive about torrents.  There is a grandeur in that first rush of passion which results from the sudden melting of the snows of the heart’s purity and faith and high unstained devotion.

But both torrents and navigable rivers are liable to a common fate, they may fall over precipices, and when this comes to pass even the latter cease to be navigable for a space.  Now this catastrophe was about to overtake our friend the Colonel.

Well, Harold Quaritch had dined, and had enjoyed a pleasant as well as a good dinner.  The Squire, who of late had been cheerful as a cricket, was in his best form, and told long stories with an infinitesimal point.  In anybody else’s mouth these stories would have been wearisome to a degree, but there was a gusto, an originality, and a kind of Tudor period flavour about the old gentleman, which made his worst and longest story acceptable in any society.  The Colonel himself had also come out in a most unusual way.  He possessed a fund of dry humour which he rarely produced, but when he did produce it, it was of a most satisfactory order.  On this particular night it was all on view, greatly to the satisfaction of Ida, who was a witty as well as a clever woman.  And so it came to pass that the dinner was a very pleasant one.

Harold and the Squire were still sitting over their wine.  The latter was for the fifth time giving his guest a full and particular account of how his deceased aunt, Mrs. Massey, had been persuaded by a learned antiquarian to convert or rather to restore Dead Man’s Mount into its supposed primitive condition of an ancient British dwelling, and of the extraordinary expression of her face when the bill came in, when suddenly the servant announced that George was waiting to see him.

The old gentleman grumbled a great deal, but finally got up and went to enjoy himself for the next hour or so in talking about things in general with his retainer, leaving his guest to find his way to the drawing-room.

When the Colonel reached the room, he found Ida seated at the piano, singing.  She heard him shut the door, looked round, nodded prettily, and then went on with her singing.  He came and sat down on a low chair some two paces from her, placing himself in such a position that he could see her face, which indeed he always found a wonderfully pleasant object of contemplation.  Ida was playing without music—­the only light in the room was that of a low lamp with a red fringe to it.  Therefore, he could not see very much, being with difficulty able to trace the outlines of her features, but if the shadow thus robbed