Another, too, had been a hero-lover.  How did that lady of night’s eyes come to fall into her subjection?

He put no question as to the name she bore; it hung in a black suspense—­vividly at its blackest illuminated her possessor.  A man is a hero to some effect who wins a woman like this; and, if his glory bespells her, so that she flings all to the winds for him, burns the world; if, for solely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she consents of her free will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he shines in a way to make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy.  For that must be the idolatrous devotion desired by them all.

Weyburn struck down upon his man’s nature—­the bad in us, when beauty of woman is viewed; or say, the old original revolutionary, best kept untouched; for a touch or a meditative pause above him, fetches him up to roam the civilized world devouringly and lawlessly.  It is the special peril of the young lover of life, that an inflammability to beauty in women is in a breath intense with him.  He is, in truth, a thinly-sealed volcano of our imperishable ancient father; and has it in him to be the multitudinously-amorous of the mythologic Jove.  Give him head, he can be civilization’s devil.  Is she fair and under a shade?—­then is she doubly fair.  The shadow about her secretes mystery, just as the forest breeds romance:  and mystery is a measureless realm.  If we conceive it, we have a mysterious claim on her who is the heart of it.

He marched on that road to the music of sonorous brass for some drunken minutes.

The question came, What of the man who takes advantage of her self-sacrifice?

It soon righted him, and he did Lord Ormont justice, and argued the case against Lady Charlotte’s naked hints.

This dark-eyed heroine’s bearing was assured, beyond an air of dependency.  Her deliberate short nod to him at his leave-taking, and the toneless few words she threw to my lord, signified sufficiently that she did not stand defying the world or dreading it.

She had by miracle the eyes which had once charmed him—­could again—­would always charm.  She reminded him of Aminta Farrell’s very eyes under the couchant-dove brows—­something of her mouth, the dimple running from a corner.  She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and self-cancelled look, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor fervour, nor a bestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure, though there seemed no reserve.  One would be near the meaning in declaring it to bewilder men with the riddle of openhandedness.  We read it—­all may read it—­as we read inexplicable plain life; in which let us have a confiding mind, despite the blows at our heart, and some understanding will enter us.

He shut the door upon picture and speculations, returning to them by another door.  The lady had not Aminta’s freshness:  she might be taken for an elder sister of Aminta.  But Weyburn wanted to have her position defined before he set her beside Aminta.  He writhed under Lady Charlotte’s tolerating scorn of “the young woman.”  It roused an uneasy sentiment of semi-hostility in the direction of my lord; and he had no personal complaint to make.