“I fear no one but that rascal, Joris Hyde.”

“A rascal he is not, because the same woman he loves as thyself.  Such words weaken any cause.  No wrong have I seen or known of Lieutenant Hyde.”

“I will call him a rascal, and I will give him no other title, though his father leave him an earl.”

“Now, then, I shall go.  I like not ill words.  Write thy letter, but put out of thy mind all bad thoughts first.  A love letter from a bitter heart is not lucky.  And of all thy wit thou wilt have great need if to a woman thou write.”

“Oh, they are intolerable, aching joys!  A man who dares to love a woman, or dares to believe in her, dares to be mad.”

“Come, come!  No evil must thou speak of good women, I swear that I was never out of it yet, when I judged men as they judged women.  The art of loving a woman is the art of trusting her—­yes, though the heavens fall.  Now, then, haste with thy letter.  Thou may have ‘Yes’ to it ere thou sleep to-night.”

“And I may have ‘No.’”

“To be sure, if thou think ‘no.’  But, even so, if thou lose the wedding ring, the hand is still left; another ring may be found.”

“‘No,’ would be a deathblow to me.”

“It will not.  While a man has meat and drink love will not starve him; with world’s business and world’s pleasure an unkind love he makes shift to forget.  Bring to me word of thy good fortune this night, and in the morning there is the Boston business.  Longer it can hardly wait.”

But the letter to Cornelia which Hyde found to slip off his pen like dancing was a much more difficult matter to Rem.  He wrote and destroyed, and wrote again and destroyed, and this so often that he finally resolved to go to Maiden Lane for his inspiration.  “I may see Cornelia in the garden, or at the window, and when I see what I desire, surely I shall have the wit to ask for it.”

So he thought, and with the thought he locked his desk and went towards his home in Maiden Lane.  He met George Hyde sauntering up the street looking unhappy and restless, and he suspected at once that he had been walking past Doctor Moran’s house in the hope of seeing Cornelia and had been disappointed.  The thought delighted him.  He was willing to bear disappointment himself, if by doing so some of Hyde’s smiling confidence was changed to that unhappy uneasiness which he detected in his rival’s face and manner.  The young men bowed to each other but did not speak.  In some occult way they divined a more positive antagonism than they had ever before been conscious of.

“I cannot go out of the house,” thought Rem, “without meeting that fop.  He is in at one door, and out at another; this way, that way, up street, and down street—­the devil take the fellow!”