will only marry the man I respect." Thus it was her respect for Guy Darrell that made her honor him by her preference. She appreciated his intellect—she fell in love with the reputation which the intellect had acquired. And Darrell might certainly choose worse. His cool reason inclined him much to Honoria. When Alban Morley argued in her favor he had no escape from acquiescence, except in the turns and doubles of his ironical humor. But his heart was a rebel to his reason; and between you and me, Honoria was exactly one of those young women by whom a man of grave years ought to be attracted, and by whom, somehow or other, he never is; I suspect, because the older we grow the more we love youthfulness of character. When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life, took a bride in Olym- pus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose Hebe.
Will Darrell find his Hebe in Flora Vyvyan? Alban Morley became more and more alarmed by that apprehension. He was shrewd enough to recognize in her the girl of all others formed to glad the eye and plague the heart of a grave and reverend seigneur. As it might well not only flatter the vanity, but beguile the judgment, of a man who feared his hand would be accepted only for the sake of his money, that Flora, just at this moment, refused the greatest match in the kingdom—young Lord Vipont, son of the new Earl of Montfort—a young man of good sense, high character, well-looking as men go, heir to estates almost royal—a young man whom no girl on earth is justified in refusing. But would the whimsical creature accept Darrell? Was she not merely making sport of him, and if, caught by her arts, he, sage and elder, solemnly offered homage and hand to that belle de-daigncuse who had just doomed to despair a comely young magnate with five times his fortune, would she not hasten to make him the ridicule of London?
Darrell had, perhaps, his secret reasons for thinking other- wise, but he did not confide them even to Alban Morley. This much only will the narrator, more candid, say to the reader—if out of the three whom his thoughts fluttered round, Guy Darrell wished to select the one who would love him best—love him with the whole, fresh, unreasoning heart of a girl whose childish for- wardness sprung from childlike innocence—let him dare the hazard of refusal and of ridicule; let him say to Flora Vyvyan, in the pathos of his sweet, deep voice, " Come, and be the spoiled darling of my gladdened age; let my life, ere it sink into night, be rejoiced by the bloom and fresh breeze of the morn- ing!"
But to say he must wish it; he himself must love—love with
