whose moral standard exceeds immeasurably their ordinary rule of conduct, he cherished somewhere in an obscure corner of his brain an image of perfection closely related to the type which he found least alluring in reality.  Humanly tolerant of those masculine weaknesses he shared, he had erected mentally a pinnacle of virtue upon which he exacted that a frailer being should maintain an equilibrium.  A pretty woman, it was true, might go at a merry pace provided she was not related to him, but he required that both his mother and his aunt should be above suspicion.  In earlier days he had had several affairs of sentiment with ladies to whom he declined to bow if he happened to be walking with a member of his family; and this fine discrimination was characteristic of him, for it proved that he was capable of losing his heart in a direction where he would refuse to lift his hat.

At the late breakfast to which he returned, he found Mr. Chamberlayne, who had ridden over from Applegate to consult with Kesiah.  In appearance the lawyer belonged to what is called “the old school,” and his manner produced an effect of ostentation which was foreign to his character as a Christian and a gentleman.  His eyebrows, which were still dark and thick, hung prominently over his small, sparkling eyes behind gold rimmed spectacles, while a lock of silver hair was brushed across his forehead with the romantic wave which was fashionable in the period when Lord Byron was the favorite poet.  Kindness and something more—­something that was almost a touching innocence, looked from his face.  “It is a good world—­I’ve always found it to be a good world, and if I’ve ever heard anything against it, I’ve refused to believe it,” his look seemed to say.

All through breakfast he rambled on after his amiable habit—­praising the food, praising the flowers, praising the country, praising the universe.  The only creature or object he omitted to praise was Kesiah—­for in his heart he regarded it as an outrage on the part of Providence that a woman should have been created quite so ugly.  While he talked he kept his eyes turned away from her, gazing abstractedly through the window or at a portrait of Mrs. Gay, painted in the first year of her marriage, which hung over the sideboard.  In the mental world which he inhabited all women were fair and fragile and endowed with a quality which he was accustomed to describe as “solace.”  When occasionally, as in the case of Kesiah, one was thrust upon his notice, to whom by no stretch of the imagination these graces could be attributed, he disposed of the situation by the simple device of gazing above her head.  In his long and intimate acquaintance, he had never looked Kesiah in the face, and he never intended to.  He was perfectly aware that if he were for an instant to forget himself so far as to contemplate her features, he should immediately lose all patience with her.  No woman, he felt, had the right to affront so openly