‘Am I in love with Isabel Bretherton?’ he asked himself at last, lying back on his chair with his eyes on the portrait of his sister.  ’Perhaps Marie could tell me—­I don’t understand myself.  I don’t think so.  And if I were, I am not a youngster, and my life is a tolerably full one.  I could hold myself in and trample it down if it were best to do so.  I can hardly imagine myself absorbed in a great passion.  My bachelor life is a good many years old—­my habits won’t break up easily.  And, supposing I felt the beginnings of it, I could stop it if reason were against it.’

He left his chair, and began to pace up and down the room, thinking.  ’And there is absolutely no sort of reason in my letting myself fall in love with Isabel Bretherton!  She has never given me the smallest right to think that she takes any more interest in me than she does in hundreds of people whom she meets on friendly terms, unless it may be an intellectual interest, as Wallace imagines, and that’s a poor sort of stepping-stone to love!  And if it were ever possible that she should, this afternoon has taken away the possibility.  For, however magnanimous a woman may be, a thing like that rankles:  it can’t help it.  She will feel the sting of it worse to-morrow than to-day, and, though she will tell herself that she bears no grudge, it will leave a gulf between us.  For, of course, she must go on acting, and, whatever depressions she may have, she must believe in herself; no one can go on working without it, and I shall always recall to her something harsh and humiliating!’

’Supposing, by any chance, it were not so—­supposing I were able to gather up my relation with her again and make it a really friendly one—­I should take, I think, a very definite line; I should make up my mind to be of use to her.  After all, it is true what she says:  there are many things in me that might be helpful to her, and everything there was she should have the benefit of.  I would make a serious purpose of it.  She should find me a friend worth having.’

His thoughts wandered on a while in this direction.  It was pleasant to see himself in the future as Miss Bretherton’s philosopher and friend, but in the end the sense of reality gained upon his dreams.  ’I am a fool!’ he said to himself resolutely at last, ’and I may as well go to bed and put her out of my mind.  The chance is over—­gone—­done with, if it ever existed.’

The next morning, on coming down to breakfast, he saw among his letters a handwriting which startled him.  Where had he seen it before?  In Wallace’s hand three days ago?  He opened it, and found the following note:—­