moods inspired defiance of his sentence, or a
qualified surrender. And, as he walked on, the
bitterness grew within him, and he pitilessly
reviled himself for having allowed himself to be
made a fool of by "that little country goose,"
when he was well aware that there were hundreds
of women of the best families of the land
who would feel honored at receiving his attentions.
But this sort of reasoning he knew to he
both weak and contemptible, and his better
self soon rose in loud rebellion.

"After all," he muttered, "in the main thing
she was right. I am a miserable good-for-
nothing, a hot-house plant, a poor stick, and if I
were a woman myself, I don't think I should
waste my affections on a man of that calibre."

Then he unconsciously fell to analyzing
Bertha's character, wondering vaguely that a
person who moved so timidly in social life,
appearing so diffident, from an ever-present fear
of blundering against the established forms of
etiquette, could judge so quickly, and with such
a merciless certainty, whenever a moral question,
a question of right and wrong, was at issue.
And, pursuing the same train of thought, he
contrasted her with himself, who moved in the
highest spheres of society as in his native
element, heedless of moral scruples, and conscious