His darling sin

by M. E. Braddon

"I am not going to shut my door against the most amusing man I have met for a long time."

"Ah, that is how he begins. He amuses. It is the thin end of the wedge. Then he interests—then—and then—— But I need not pursue the subject. He will never reach those later stages. You will find him out before then. But in the mean time he——"

"Why do you stop short like that?"

Howard had been nearly saying, "He will compromise you," but would not for worlds have made an insulting suggestion to a woman he so thoroughly believed in.

"Come, my dear Mr. Howard, you must credit me with some knowledge of human nature, and believe that if I find Colonel Rannock unworthy of my acquaintance, I shall know how to dismiss him. I want to be amused. I have had two great sorrows in my life—the loss of a father I adored, and of the best of husbands. Perhaps you don't know how sad life is when one is always looking back."

"Do I not? I, who have lived nearly half a century!"

"Ah, no doubt you too have your griefs. But you are a sportsman and an explorer, a politician and a philanthropist. You have so many ways of forgetting. I have only a woman's distractions, dawdling about the Continent, or steeping myself in London gaieties."

Mr. Howard did not pursue the argument, and he never recurred to it. He was too proud a man to hazard a second repulse. If she made so light of his counsel she should be troubled with no more of it. He admired and esteemed her, and there may have been some touch of deeper feeling, which, at his sober age, he would scarcely confess to himself, though Lafontaine's sad question often found an echo in his breast—"Ai-je passé le temps d'aimer?"

Lady Perivale lived in a crowd all that season, but Colonel Rannock was a prominent figure in the crowd, and people were kinder to him than they had been, on her account. It was thought that she would marry him, and he would shine forth rehabilitated, rich, and a power in society; and the clever, pushing, second-rate people who had cut him last season began to think they had been precipitate and ill-advised. The end of the season came in a moment, as it seemed, after Goodwood. Everybody was going or gone, and the Park was a Sahara sprinkled with nurse-maids and perambulators. Lady Perivale made up her house-party for her Border Castle, but Colonel Rannock was not of the party. She let him haunt her footsteps in London, but she would not admit him to the intimacy of a house-guest. So much evil had George Howard's warning done him. He tried hard for an invitation, and was irritated at failing.

"You will have no music in your villeggiatura, and what a dull set you have chosen. Your women are nice enough, young and bright, and pretty, and only wanting to be amused; but your men are hopeless. Frank Lawford—a quarterly review in breeches, Canon Millighan—a Jesuit in disguise, and Captain Grant, Sir Henry Bolton, Jack Scudamore, who live only to fill game-bags."