genuine, and such a state of mind would not produce the certainly active efforts she put forth.  In truth, Eugene, though naturally observant, was, like all men, a little blind where he himself was concerned; and perhaps a shrewd spectator would have connected Haddington in some way with Miss Kate’s maneuvers.  Such, at any rate, was the view of Bob Territon, and no doubt he would have expressed it with his usual frankness if he had not had his own reasons for keeping silence.

Stafford’s state of mind was somewhat peculiar.  A student from his youth, to whom invisible things had always seemed more real than visible, and hours of solitude better filled than busy days, he had had but little experience of that sort of humanity among which he found himself.  A man may administer a cure of souls with marked efficiency in the Mile End Road, and yet find himself much at a loss when confronted with the latest products of the West End.  The renunciation of the world, except so far as he could aid in mending it, had seemed an easy and cheap price to pay for the guerdon he strove for, to one who had never seen how pleasant this wicked world can look in certain of its aspects.  Hitherto, at school, at college, and afterward, he had resolutely turned away from all opportunities of enlarging his experience in this direction.  He had shunned society, and had taken great pains to restrict his acquaintance with the many devout ladies who had sought him out to the barest essentials of what ought to have been, if it was not always, their purpose in seeking him.  The prince of this world was now preparing a more subtle attack; and under the seeming compulsion of common prudence no less than of old friendship, he found himself flung into the very center of the sort of life he had with such pains avoided.  It may be doubted whether he was not, like an unskillful swimmer, ignorant of his danger; but it is certain that, had he been able to search out his own heart with his former acuteness of self-judgment, he would have found the first germs of inclinations and feelings to which he had been up till now a stranger.  He would have discovered the birth of a new longing for pleasure, a growing delight in the sensuous side of things; or rather, he would have become convinced that temptations of this sort, which had previously been in the main creatures of his own brain, postulated in obedience to the doctrines and literature in which he had been bred, had become self-assertive realities; and that what had been set up only to be triumphantly knocked down had now taken a strong root of its own, and refused to be displaced by spiritual exercises or physical mortifications.  Had he been able to pursue the analysis yet further, it may be that, even in these days, he would have found that the forces of this world were already beginning to personify themselves for him in the attractive figure of Claudia Territon.  As it was, however, this discovery was yet far from him.