In fact he had another reason for uneasiness.  His mother had written him, asking why he stayed so long in an unimportant city, he who had been so active a traveler hitherto.  Knowledge of the capitals was what he needed.  Agreeable people he could find at home, if his only object was to pass the time.  What could he reply?  Could he say that he had become very much interested in studying a schoolteacher—­a very charming school-teacher?  He could see the vision raised in the minds of his mother and of the earl and of his elder sister as they should read this precious confession—­a vision of a schoolma’am, of an American girl, and an American girl without any money at that, moving in the little orbit of Chisholm House.  The thing was absurd.  And yet why was it absurd?  What was English politics, what was Chisholm House, what was everybody in England compared to this noble girl?  Nay, what would the world be without her?  He grew hot in thinking of it, indignant at his relations and the whole artificial framework of things.

The situation was almost humiliating.  He began, to doubt the stability of his own position.  Hitherto he had met no obstacle:  whatever he had desired he had obtained.  He was a sensible fellow, and knew the world was not made for him; but it certainly had yielded to him in everything.  Why did he doubt now?  That he did doubt showed him the intensity of his interest in Margaret.  For love is humble, and undervalues self in contrast with that which it desires.  At this touchstone rank, fortune, all that go with them, seemed poor.  What were all these to a woman’s soul?  But there were women enough, women enough in England, women more beautiful than Margaret, doubtless as amiable and intellectual.  Yet now there was for him only one woman in the world.  And Margaret showed no sign.  Was he about to make a fool of himself?  If she should reject him he would seem a fool to himself.  If she accepted him he would seem a fool to the whole circle that made his world at home.  The situation was intolerable.  He would end it by going.

But he did not go.  If he went today he could not see her tomorrow.  To a lover anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow.  In short, he could not go so long as there was any doubt about her disposition towards him.

And a man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of the passion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all our commonsense about the relation of the sexes.  Love is still a personal question, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except in the old way.  Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid men are upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under its influence; the student loses his appetite—­God bless him!  I like to hear the young fellows at the club rattle on bravely, indifferent to the whole thing—­skeptical, in fact, about it.  And then to see them, one after another, stricken down, and looking a little sheepish and not saying much, and by-and-by radiant.  You would think they owned the world.  Heaven, I think, shows us no finer sarcasm than one of these young skeptics as a meek family man.