An evil smile curled round the old roue’s sensual mouth, radiating even to the verge of the forest of his iron-gray whiskers.

“Clanronald not clever?” he replied.  “The cleverest man I know.  He knew how his wife would be tempted, and he has taken the greatest pains to encourage a counteracting influence—­family pride.  Don’t you know she is a Hautagne?  It is a tradition with that race that their women never go wrong—­under a prince of the blood.  None of these are available just now, so she is still ’Une Madeleine, dans la puissance de son mari, et dans l’impuissance de se repentir.’”

It was worse than useless to argue with Fallowfield.  All your own best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his sophistries and sarcasms often came home.  Like old wounds, they would begin to shoot and rankle in after years, just when it was most important and profitable to forget them.

We separated soon after this.  Sir Henry’s face wore an expression of placid self-congratulation.  He thought the conversation had been rather improving, I believe, and that some of the ideas and illustrations had been rather neatly put; so he laid his head down that night with the calm, satisfied feeling of a good man who has done his duty and not lost a day.

He was not more ingenious in overcoming the scruples of others than in silencing his own conscience, though of late years this last had probably ceased to give him much trouble.  Finer feelings with him were only “sensations morbidly exaggerated,” and he made no sort of allowance for such; among others, utterly ignoring remorse, I doubt if he ever looked forward; I am sure he never looked back.  A parody on the “tag” which was given to Cambronne would sum up his terribly simple and consistent creed—­La femme se rend, mais ne meurt pas.

CHAPTER XIV.

     “I hold him but a fool, that would endanger
     His body for a girl that loves him not.”

Fallowfield left us the next morning, the Bellasys later in the same day.  They were to pay divers visits, and then return to Kerton.  Lady Catharine pressed them to do so; though she liked the daughter less than the mother, she was so anxious Guy should marry some one that I think she would have accepted even Flora with thankfulness.

It is a favorite delusion with the British parent that marriage will work a miracle, and steady their children for life, by casting forth the lutins who beset them.  A thousand failures have not convinced the good speculative matrons of the hazard of the experiment, nor will as many more do so; they will go on match-making and blundering to the end of time.  For a very brief space the evil spirits are exorcised; but before the gloss is off the new-married couple’s new furniture, one of the band creeps back and opens the door to his fellows.  These hardly know their