The Half-Hearted

elt only the mellow gloom of the evening and the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing

His plans thus early foiled, nothing remained but to draw the more fortunate Arthur, so in a conspirator's aside he asked him his verdict. But Arthur refus

Alice soon entered to disturb with the disquieting glory of her hair. The family of the Haystouns had ever a knack of fine sentiment. Fantastic, unpractical, they were gluttons for the romantic, the recondite, and the dainty. But now had come a breath of strong wind which rent the meshes of a philandering fancy. A very new and strange feeling was beginning to make itself known. He had come to think of Alice with the hot pained affection which makes the high mountains of the world sink for the time to a species of mole-hillock. She danced through his dreams and usurped all the path

ere clear in the gravel, and the ancient butler had an air of ceremony. "Mr. Wrati

ossed the hall, raced down a lengthy passage, and flung open the door of his sanctu

visit is this? I thought you would be over your ear

I thought I would try this place first. What a fortressed wilderness you live in! I got out at Gledsmuir after travelling some dreary miles in a train which stopped at every f

em; they were only amateurs acting in the absence of the properly qualified Wratislaw. Besides, it had been anxious work, for while each had sworn to himself aforetime to protect his friend from the

rk gloom of pines on the hill. They fell ravenously on the meal, for one man had eaten nothing since midday and the others were fresh from moorland air. Ther

ed his host. "Things s

id you lay no private lines of

t I cannot use them. I think I have already made you a present of most. By the by, I see from

sat back in his chair. "You are

ry on the other side of the frontier would invent to ke

was carelessly pulling a flower to pieces. "Ther

s more stories in his head than George. But if matters got into a tangle I would rather not be in his company. Thwaite is a ge

e might call himself Constantine Marka, or Arthur Mar

so. It was a chap of that name who had gone north the week before I arrived.

dn't se

But

rful being whom the Foreign Office is more interested in than any one else in the worl

f the canard," said Lewis, with s

cate things for me, for I am to represent the Office

ngratulate you, Tommy. Now beginneth

you. Merkland has resigned; it will be in the papers

wis, with quic

to the Conservative Club at Gledsmuir, and it seems you are their most cherished possibility. Th

at Merkland would not resign, and that I was sick of party politics and would not interfere with hi

can tell him that you only heard about Merkland to-night, an

already. The man is not very particular, and there is nothing to hinder him from blazoning it up and down the

ou understand. You say you hate party politics, and I am with you, but there is no reason why you should not use them as a crutch to better work. You are in your way an expert, and that is what we will need above

young man, in great doubt. "I hate the idea of fig

speak to Stocks myself. It will be a sharp fight, but I see no reason why you should not

or a month, and the house will be divided against itself. Arthur has promised to

or later, you know, and it is as well that you should seize the favourabl

his great arms, and w

ly that Wratislaw fell into such moods, but when the chance came it was not to be lightly disregarded. A laborious youth had given him great stores of scholarship, and Lewis's books were a curious if chaotic collection. On the fly-leaf of a little duodecimo was an inscription from the author of Waverley, who had often made Etterick his hunting-ground. A Dunbar had Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord K

oems, Virgil and the Pilgrim's Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French Memoires, a Dante, a Homer, and a badly printed G

seriously, I get more erratic every day? Knocking about the world and living alone make me a queer slave of whims. I a

ani

about people's opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a

w, with mock gravity. "You have not

d lied withal like a trooper, to th

ll things, for he has a crazy intuition that it is the normal which women really like, being themselves but a hair's-br

ch an air of relief that George began to lau

tone of j

a book. But that is not the thing I was talking about. I want to be normal,

rel

ild's capacity. He can talk the most shrieking platitudes as if he

these Mr. Stocks had long ago claimed a monopoly. He felt bitterly jealous-the jealousy of the innocent man to whom woman is an unaccountable creature, whose habits and likings must be curiously studied. He was dimly conscious of lacking the stage attributes of a lover. He could not pose as a mirror of all virtues, a fanatic for the True and t

led him hither and thither. He could not utter moral platitudes to checkmate his opponent's rhetoric, for, after all, he was honest; nor could he fill the part of the cold critic of hazy sentiment; gladly though he would have done it, he feared the reproach in girlish eyes. This g