Mrs. Blanchard appeared with her daughter, and subsequent conversation banished a haunting sense of disloyalty to his brother from Martin’s mind.  Chris never looked more splendid or more sweet than in that noon, new come from a walk with Clement Hicks.  Martin listened to her voice, stayed as long as he dared, and then departed with many emotions breaking like a storm upon his lonely life.  He began to long for her with overwhelming desire.  He had scarcely looked at a woman till now, and this brown-eyed girl of twenty, so full of life, so beautiful, set his very soul helplessly adrift on the sea of love.  Her sudden laugh, like Will’s, but softer and more musical, echoed in the man’s ear as he returned to his house and, in a ferment, tramped the empty rooms.

His own requirements had been amply met by three apartments, furnished with sobriety and great poverty of invention; but now he pictured Chris singing here, tripping about with her bright eyes and active fingers.  Like his brother before him, he fell back upon his money, and in imagination spent many pounds for one woman’s delight.  Then from this dream he tumbled back into reality and the recollection that his goddess must be wooed and won.  No man ever yet failed to make love from ignorance how to begin, but the extent and difficulties of his undertaking weighed very heavily on Martin Grimbal at this juncture.  To win even a measure of her friendship appeared a task almost hopeless.  Nevertheless, through sleepless nights, he nerved himself to the tremendous attempt.  There was not so much of self-consciousness in him, but a great store of self-distrust.  Martin rated himself and his powers of pleasing very low; and unlike the tumultuous and volcanic methods of John, his genius disposed him to a courtship of most tardy development, most gradual ripening.  To propose while a doubt existed of the answer struck him as a proceeding almost beyond the bounds of man’s audacity.  He told himself that time would surely show what chance or hope there might be, and that opportunity must be left to sneak from the battle at any moment when ultimate failure became too certainly indicated.  In more sanguine moods, however, by moonlight, or alone on the high moors, greater bravery and determination awoke in him.  At such times he would decide to purchase new clothes and take thought for externals generally.  He also planned some studies in such concerns as pleased women if he could learn what they might be.  His first deliberate if half-hearted attack relied for its effect upon a novel.  Books, indeed, are priceless weapons in the armory of your timid lover; and let but the lady discover a little reciprocity, develop an unsuspected delight in literature, as often happens, and the most modest volume shall achieve a practical result as far beyond its intrinsic merit as above the writer’s dream.