she enjoyed the spangles and tinsel of the
ballet in carnival.

Not so Veronica. She would willingly
be second to none. There were moments
when the chance mention of Maud
Desmond's family, or an allusion to the glories
of the ancestral mansion at Delaney, made
her sore and jealous. She would even be
rendered irritably impatient by Maud's
simple indifference on the score of her
ancestry: though the least display of pride
of birth on the part of her father's ward
would have been intolerable to Veronica's
haughty spirit.

Yet Veronica was no monster of selfish
consistency. She was often visited by
better impulses and a longing for a nobler
aim in life. But the first shock of practical
effort and self-denial repulsed her like
a douche of ice-cold water. There came no
reaction, no after-glow, and she shrank back
shivering, with a piteous cry of, "I cannot
be good."

She knew herself to be wretchedly
dissatisfied. And, although her youth and
bodily health at intervals asserted their
elasticity, and broke forth into a wild flow
of gaiety and good spirits, she was yet, at
nineteen years old, secretly consumed by
dreary discontent.

Then she told herself that it was easy
for happy people to be good. "If I were
but happy, I should be good, and kind, and
generous," she said.

And latterly the thought had taken
possession of her that it would make her happy
to become my Lady Gale.

Opportunity is the divinity which shapes
the ends of most love affairs, let them be
rough-hewn how they will. Under the
favouring influence of residence beneath
the same roof, daily walks together, and
evenings spent in each other's society, the
intimacy between the vicar's daughter and
the stranger sojourning in her father's
house grew rapidly. The disparity of age
between them offered no obstacle to the
familiarity of their intercourse.

There are some men who accept the
advance of age, and even make a step to
meet it; there are others who painfully
and eagerly fend it off; again, there are
some who simply ignore it. To this latter
category belonged Sir John Gale. You
could not say that he indulged in any
undue affectation of juvenility. He merely
seemed to take it for granted that such
affectation would have been entirely
superfluous.

From the first moment of seeing Veronica
he had been struck by her remarkable
beauty. And not her least attraction in
his eyes, was the contrast between her
character and her position.

"Who the deuce would have dreamed of
finding such a girl as that, in an English
country parsonage!" he said to himself.

In their conversations together, Veronica
had spoken of her mother's early life, and
had not attempted to conceal her own
longing to quit Shipley-in-the-Wold, and
Daneshire altogether, for other and brighter
scenes. He had noted, with a sort of cynical
good-humour, the girl's aspiration after
wealth and display; her restless discontent
with the obscurity of the vicarage; the love
of admiration which it required no very
acute penetration to discover in her. But
these traits of character were by no means
distasteful to Sir John. Coupled with a plain
face, or an awkward manner, they would
have–not disgusted, so much as–bored
him. United to rare beauty, and a quick
intelligence, they amused and attracted
him. And then, to complete the spell, came
that crowning charm without which all the
rest would have wasted their sweetness on
Sir John Gale; the fact that this young,
brilliant, and beautiful girl, desired very
unmistakably to be pleasing in his eyes.

                  If she be not fair for me,
                  What care I how fair she be?

might have been said, and said truly, by
the baronet, respcting the loveliest woman
ever cast in mortal mould. Time and
self indulgence, in proportion as they had
indurated his heart, had rendered his egotism
more and more keenly sensitive.

It gratified his egotism to be, from
whatever cause, an object of attention to
Veronica. He cared not to ask himself
whether she would have lowered her
beautiful eyes to regard him for an instant, had
he been poor and obscure. His wealth and
his rank were part of himself; inseparable
from that Capital I, which filled up for
him so large a space in God's universe.

"The girl would make a furore if she
were known," he said to himself. "Her
colouring, hair, and eyes, are perfect. And
she has spirit enough for Lucifer!"
Nevertheless he had not gauged the
height of Veronica's ambition.
Day by day, and hour by hour, the
attraction exercised over him by her beauty,
grew stronger.

"You are not such a votary of Mrs.
Grundy as your friend," he said to her one
day.

"As Maud?" answered Veronica, laughing