I fancied myself in love.  She wanted to get a husband, and she thought me—­rightly—­ass enough to accept the post.  I was very young then even for my years,—­a student, an idealist, with an imagination highly developed, and no knowledge whatever of the world as it actually is.  Anyhow, before I had known her a month, I had determined to make her my wife.  My parents were abroad at the time, George and Lucy here, so that it was to Jack that I imparted the news of my resolve.  As you may imagine, he did all that he could to shake it.  But I was immovable.  I disbelieved his facts, and despised his contempt from the standpoint of my own superior morality.  This state of things continued for several weeks, during the greater part of which time I was at Oxford.  I only knew that while I was there, Jack had made Delia’s acquaintance, and was apparently cultivating it assiduously.

“One day, during the Easter vacation, I got a note from her asking me to supper at her house.  Jack was invited too:  we lodged together while my people were away.

“There is no need to dwell upon that supper.  There were two or three women there of her own sort, or worse, and a dozen men from among the most profligate in London.  The conversation was, I should think, bad even for that class; and she, the goddess of my idolatry, outstripped them all by the foul, coarse shamelessness of her language and behavior.  Before the entertainment was half over, I rose and took my leave, accompanied by Jack and another man,—­ Legard was his name,—­who I presume was bored.  Just as we had passed through into the anteroom, which lay beyond the one in which we had been eating, Delia followed us, and laying her hand on Jack’s arm, said that she must speak with him.  Legard and I went into the outer hall, and we had not been there more than a minute when the door from the anteroom opened, and we heard Delia’s voice.  I remember the words well,—­that was not the only occasion on which I was to hear them.  ‘I will keep the ring as a record of my love,’ she said, ’and understand, that though you may forget, I never shall.’  Jack came through, the door closed, and as we went out I glanced towards his left hand, and saw, as I expected to see, the absence of the ring which he usually wore there.  It contained a gem which my mother had picked up in the East, and I knew that he valued it quite peculiarly.  We always called it Jack’s talisman.

“A miserable time followed, a time for me of agonizing wonder and doubt, during which regret for my dead illusion was entirely swallowed up in the terrible dread of my brother’s degradation.  Then came the announcement of his engagement to Lady Sylvia Grey; and a week later, the very day after I had finally returned to London from Oxford, I received a summons from Delia to come and see her.  Curiosity, and the haunting fear about Jack, which still hung round me, induced me to consent to what otherwise would