It was some time before he would bring himself to admit it even to himself, for he was wont to pride himself on his superiority to all attacks of the tender passion.
Often and often had he amused himself and his chosen companions by ridiculing the conditions of those weak mortals who allowed themselves to be carried away by what he termed a weak and contemptible affection for the other sex.
Marriage, he used to say, was entirely a matter of business. A man didn't marry until he was obliged, and then only did so to better himself. As to love, and that kind of thing—well, it was an exploded idea—a myth which had died out; at any rate, too absurd a thing altogether for a man possessed of common sense—for such a man, for instance, as Jasper Adelstone. He had seen plenty of pretty women and was received by them with anything but disfavor. He was good-looking, almost handsome, and would have been that if he could have got rid of the sharp, cunning glint of his small eyes; and he was clever and accomplished. He was just the man, it would have been supposed, to fall a victim to the tender passion; but he had stuck fast by his principles, and gone stealthily along the road to success, with his cold smile ready for everyone in general, and not a warm beam in his heart for anyone in particular.
And now! Yes, he was in love—in love as deeply, unreasoningly, as impulsively as the veriest school-boy.
This was very annoying! It would have been very annoying if the object of his passion had been an heiress or the lady of title whom he had in his inmost mind determined to marry, if he married at all; for he would have preferred to have attained to his ambition without any awkward and inconvenient love-making.
But the girl who had inspired him with this sudden and unreasoning passion was, much to his disgust, neither an heiress nor an offshoot of nobility.
She was a mere nobody—the niece of an obscure painter! She was not even in society!
There was no good to be got by marrying her, none whatever. She could not help him a single step on his ambitious path through life. On the first evening of his meeting with Stella, when the beauty, and, more than her beauty, the nameless charm of her bright, pure freshness, overwhelmed and startled him, he took himself to task very seriously.
"Jasper," he said, "you won't go and make a fool of yourself, I hope! She is entirely out of your line. She is only a pretty girl; you've seen a score, a hundred as pretty, or prettier; and she's a mere nobody! Oh, no, you won't make a fool of yourself—you'll go back to town to-morrow morning."