badly hit, but there had been no doubt at all about his love being returned, it had been given back to him in full and abundant measure.  He sighed to-night as he thought of that passionate episode.  He remembered ardent words, and saw again a face which had once been all the world to him.  Separation had come, however; his was not a stable nature, and the old love, the first love, had given place to many minor flirtations.

“I wonder where my old love is now,” he thought, and then again he felt a sense of irritation as he remembered Beatrice.  “She is quite the coolest girl I have ever met,” he said to himself.  “But I’ll win her yet.  Yes, I’m determined.  Am I to eat the bread of humiliation in vain?  Faugh!  Am I to make love to a creature like Matty Bell in the vain hope of rousing the envy or the jealousy of that proud girl?  I don’t believe she has got either envy or jealousy.  She seemed quite pleased when I spoke to that wretched little personage, although she had the grace to look a trifle ashamed for her sex when Miss Matty so openly made love to me.  Well, this is a slow place, and yet, when I think of that haughty—­no, though, she’s not haughty—­that imperturbable Beatrice Meadowsweet, it becomes positively interesting.

“Why has the girl these airs?  And her father kept a shop, too!  I found that fact out from Matty Bell to-day.  What a spiteful, teasing little gnat that same Matty is, trying to sting her best friend.  What a little mock ridiculous air she put on when she tried to explain to me the social status of a coal merchant (I presume Bell is a coal merchant) versus a draper.”

As Bertram strolled along, avoiding the High Street, and choosing the coast line for his walk, he lazily smoked a pipe, and thought, in that idle indifferent way with which men of his stamp always do exercise their mental faculties, about his future.  His past, his present, his possible future rose up before the young fellow.  He was harassed by duns, he was, according to his own way of thinking, reduced to an almost degrading state of poverty.  His mother had put her hand to a bill for a considerable amount to save him.  He was morally certain that she would have to meet that bill, and when she met it that she would be half ruined.  Nevertheless, he felt gay, and light at heart, for men of his class are seldom troubled with remorse.

Presently he reached the lodge gates.  His mother’s fad about having them locked was always religiously kept, and he grumbled now as he sought for a latch-key in his waistcoat-pocket.

He opened the side gate and let himself in; the gate had a spring, and was so constructed that it could shut and lock itself by the same act.  Bertram was preparing to walk quickly up the avenue when he was startled by a sudden morement; a tall slim apparition in gray came slowly out of the darkness, caused by the shadow of the lodge, to meet him.

“Good God!” he said; and he stepped back, and his heart thumped hard against his breast.