“Well,” I said, smiling, “let us console ourselves with the thought that we are not all lunatics and drunkards.”

“No,” he answered; “but there are other evils besides these, moral taints as well as physical, curses which have their roots in worlds beyond our own,—­sins of the fathers which are visited upon the children.”

He had lost all violence and bitterness of tone now; but the weary dejection which had taken their place communicated itself to my spirit with more subtle power than his previous mood had owned.

“That is why,” he went on, and his manner seemed to give more purpose to his speech than hitherto,—­“that is why, so far as I am concerned, I mean to shirk the responsibility and remain unmarried.”

I was hardly surprised at his words.  I felt that I had expected them, but their utterance seemed to intensify the gloom which rested upon us.  Alan was the first to arouse himself from its influence.

“After all,” he said, turning round to me and speaking lightly, “without looking so far and so deep, I think my resolve is a prudent one.  Above all things, let us take life easily, and you know what St. Paul says about ’trouble in the flesh,’—­a remark which I am sure is specially applicable to briefless barristers, even though possessed of a modest competence of their own.  Perhaps one of these days, when I am a fat old judge, I shall give my cook a chance if she is satisfactory in her clear soups; but till then I shall expect you, Evie, to work me one pair of carpet-slippers per annum, as tribute due to a bachelor cousin.”

I don’t quite know what I answered,—­my heart was heavy and aching,—­but I tried with true feminine docility to follow the lead he had set me.  He continued for some time in the same vein; but as we approached the house the effort seemed to become too much for him, and we relapsed again into silence.

This time I was the first to break it.  “I suppose,” I said, drearily, “all those horrid people will have come by now.”

“Horrid people,” he repeated, with rather an uncertain laugh, and through the darkness I saw his figure bend forward as he stretched out his hand to caress my horse’s neck.  “Why, Evie, I thought you were pining for gayety, and that it was, in fact, for the purpose of meeting these ‘horrid people’ that you came here.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, wistfully; “but somehow the last week has been so pleasant that I cannot believe that anything will ever be quite so nice again.”

We had arrived at the house as I spoke, and the groom was standing at our horses’ heads.  Alan got off and came round to help me to dismount; but instead of putting up his arm as usual as a support for me to spring from, he laid his hand on mine.  “Yes, Evie,” he said, “it has been indeed a pleasant time.  God bless you for it.”  For an instant he stood there looking up at me, his face full in the light which streamed from the open