“Yes,” answered Osmonde, “perhaps ’tis that.  Any man can love a score of women—­most men do—­but there are few who can love but one, as I shall, if—­” and the words came slowly—­“if I ever find her.”

“You may not,” remarked his Grace.

“I may not,” said Osmonde, and he smiled his faint, grim smile.

He could not have sworn when he returned to the Continent that he had found her absolutely at last.  Her body he had found, but herself he had not approached nearly enough to know.  But this thing he realised, that even in the mad stories he had heard, when they had been divested of their madness, the chief figure in them had always stood out an honest, strong, fair thing, dwarfed by no petty feminine weakness, nor follies, nor spites.  Rules she broke, decorums she defied, but in such manner as hurt none but herself.  She played no tricks and laid no plots for vengeance, as she might well have done; she but went her daring, lawless way, with her head up and her great eyes wide open; and ’twas her fearless frankness and just, clear wit which moved him more than aught else, since ’twas they which made him feel that ’twas not alone her splendid body commanded love, but a spirit which might mate with a strong man’s and be companion to his own.  His theories of womankind, which were indeed curiously in advance of his age, were such as demanded great things, and not alone demanded, but also gave them.

“A man and woman should not seem beings of a different race—­the one all strength, the other all weakness,” was his thought.  “They should gaze into each other’s eyes with honest, tender human passion, which is surely a great thing, as nature made it.  Each should know the other’s love, and strength, and honour may be trusted through death—­or life—­themselves.  ’Tis not a woman’s love is won by pretty gallantries, nor a man’s by flattering weak surrender.  Love grows from a greater thing, and should be as compelling—­even in the higher, finer thing which thinks—­as is the roar of the lion in the jungle to his mate, and her glad cry which answers him.”

And therefore, at last he had said to himself that this beauteous, strong, wild thing surely might be she who would answer him one day, and he held his thoughts of her in check no more, nor avoided the speech he heard of her, and indeed, with adroitness which never betrayed itself through his reserve of bearing, at times encouraged it; and in a locked drawer in his apartments, wheresoever he travelled, there lay always the picture with the stormy, yearning eyes.

From young Tantillion he could, without any apparent approach at questioning, hear such details of Gloucestershire life in the neighbourhood of Wildairs as made him feel that he was not far separated from that which his mind dwelt on.  Little Lady Betty, having entered the world of fashion, was more voluminous in her correspondence than ever, the more especially as young Langton appeared to her a very pretty fellow, and he being Tom’s confidant, was likely to hear her letters read, or at least be given extracts from them.  Her caustic condemnation of the fantastical Mistress Clo had gradually lapsed into a doubtful wonder, which later became open amaze not untinged with a pretty spitefulness and resentment.