But on the Common after service, and at luncheon after that, and during the three or four weeks that ensued, he had much to do in reforming his opinions.  There were several facts about Olivia Guion that disorientated his points of view and set him looking for new ones.  Though he was not wholly successful in finding them, he managed, nevertheless, to justify himself for falling in love in violation of his principles.  He admitted that he would have preferred to marry a compatriot of his own, and some one above the rank of a solicitor’s daughter; but, since he had discovered the loveliest and noblest creature in the world, it was idle to cavil because one land or one situation in life rather than another had produced her.  As well complain of the rubies and pearls that deck the English crown because some were found in Tibetan mountains and others in Indian seas.  There are treasures, he argued, so precious as to transcend all merely national limitations, making them petty and irrelevant.  The one thing to the point was that in Olivia Guion he had won the human counterpart of himself, who could reflect his qualities and complete them.

* * * * *

He had been so proud that the blow on receiving Olivia’s letter in New York was a cruel one.  Though it told him nothing but that her father had lost all his money and that the invitations to the wedding had been withdrawn, this in itself was immeasurably distressing to a man with a taste for calling public attention to his movements and who liked to see what concerned him march with a certain pomp.  His marriage being an event worthy to take place in sight of the world, he had not only found ways of making it a topic of interest before leaving England, but he had summoned to it such friends of distinction as he possessed on the American side of the water.  Though he had not succeeded in getting the British Ambassador, Benyon, the military attache at Washington, was to come with his wife, and Lord Woolwich, who was aide-de-camp at Ottawa, had promised to act as best man.  His humiliation on speculating as to what they must have said when they received Olivia’s card announcing that the marriage was not to take place on the 28th was such that he fell to wondering whether it wouldn’t have been better to bluff the loss of money.  They might have carried out their plans in spite of it.  Indeed he felt the feasibility of this course the more strongly after he had actually seen Olivia and she had given him the outlines of her tale.

Watching his countenance closely, she saw that he blanched.  Otherwise he betrayed no sign of flinching.  His manner of sitting rigid and upright in his corner of the rustic seat was a perfectly natural way of listening to a story that affected him so closely.  What distressed her chiefly was the incongruity between his personality and the sordid drama in which she was inviting him to take part.  He was even more distinguished-looking than he appeared in the photographs