would sting a man who thought kindly of Madge Faringfield. It was the
first cutting thing I had ever heard him say; it showed that he was no
longer unwilling to antagonise me; it proved that he, too, could throw
off the gentleman when he chose: and it made him no longer difficult
for me to hate.




CHAPTER XVIII.

_Philip Comes at Last to London._


A human life will drone along uneventfully for years with scarce a
perceptible progress, retrogression, or change; and then suddenly,
with a few leaps, will cover more of alteration and event in a week
than it has passed through in a decade. So will the critical
occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed
to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience
proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an
unbroken line of adventures or memorable incidents.

The personal life of Philip Winwood, as distinguished from his
military career, which had no difference from that of other commanders
of rebel partisan horse, and which needs no record at my hands, was
marked by no conspicuous event from the night when he learned and
defeated Madge's plot, to the end of the war. The news of her
departure, and of Tom's death, came to him with a fresh shock, it is
true, but they only settled him deeper in the groove of sorrow, and in