“A very handsome fellow, too.  Miss Blanchard puts me in mind of him.”

“They’re much alike in some things.  But though Chris knows her brother to be good to look at, you’ll never get Will to praise her.  Funny, isn’t it?  Yet to his Phoebe, she’s the sun to a star.”

“I think so too indeed.  In fact, Miss Blanchard is the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

Clement did not answer.  He was gazing through the sunset at Chris, and as he looked he smiled, and the sadness lifted a little from off his face.

“Strange some lucky fellow has not won her before now,” proceeded the other, glancing away to hide the blush that followed his diplomacy.

Here, by all experience and reason, and in the natural sequence of events Clement Hicks might have been expected to make his confession and rejoice in his prize, but for some cause, from some queer cross-current of disposition, he shut his mouth upon the greatest fact of his life.  He answered, indeed, but his words conveyed a false impression.  What sinister twist of mind was responsible for his silence he himself could not have explained; a mere senseless monkey-mischief seemed to inspire it.  Martin had not deceived him, because the elder man was unused to probing a fellow-creature for facts or obtaining information otherwise than directly.  Clement noted the false intonation and hesitation, recollected his sweetheart’s allusion to Martin Grimbal, and read into his companion’s question something closely akin to what in reality lay behind it.  His discovery might have been expected to hasten rather than retard the truth, and a first impulse in any man had made the facts instantly clear; but Clement rarely acted on impulse.  His character was subtle, disingenuous, secretive.  Safe in absolute possession, the discovery of Martin’s attachment did not flutter him.  He laughed in his mind; then he pictured Chris the wife of this man, reviewed the worldly improvement in her position such a union must effect, and laughed no more.  Finally he decided to hold his peace; but his motives for so doing were not clear even to himself.

“Yes,” he answered, “but she’s not one to give her hand without her heart.”

These words, from Martin’s point of view, embraced a definite assurance that Chris was free; and, as they walked homewards, he kept silence upon this thought for the space of half an hour.  The uneasy hopes and black fears of love circled him about.  Perhaps his timorous mind, in some moods, had been almost relieved at declaration of the girl’s engagement to another.  But now the tremendous task of storming a virgin heart lay ahead of him, as he imagined.  Torments unfelt by those of less sensitive mould also awaited Martin Grimbal.  The self-assertive sort of man, who rates himself as not valueless, and whose love will not prevent callous calculation on the weight of his own person and purse upon the argument, is doubtless wise in his generation, and his sanguine