When he compared Cydonia with Jill at the luncheon party to which Lady Leason had invited the Flemmings during his visit, McTaggart wondered not a little at this love affair of his youth.
Even during the dinner that followed at the Castle, in all the magnificence of her surroundings, Cydonia left him shrewdly amused and indifferent.
He told himself that here again was a proof of the depths of his love for Jill.
Neither Fantine nor Mrs. Flemming could add a beat to his steady pulse.
At North Berwick a new temptation awaited him in his host's sister, one of the most beautiful girls he had seen for many a long year.
But, although daily opportunities for flirtation offered themselves to the pair, McTaggart reaped no advantage from them. They parted in firm but simple friendship.
Surely he knew his heart at last?—that vagrant double heart of his! No other woman could reign in it, side by side with his little Jill.
He loved her. And he felt afraid—a new experience for McTaggart! He began to fear that the sunny weeks by the sea might hold some dangerous rival; procrastination prove his undoing.
Jill herself, young, impulsive, might weary of such a tardy wooing; and he searched her letters anxiously, striving in vain to find some sign that the girl's heart was indeed his.
For they corresponded regularly. But the simple, almost boyish epistles rang with no note but friendliness, showed no desire for his return.