criticism he had fallen in the way of bestowing upon her, how he loved her! He felt as if he must throw up his arms and shout for joy. Suddenly she had become his, with a sense of possession new to him, and sweet to feel. The orderliness and stereotyped lines of her social system against which he had rebelled, and the iron bars of her customs which his soul had abhorred in the past, — against which his spirit had bruised and beaten itself, — now lured him on as a security for things stable and fine. In subtile ways as yet unrealized, he was being drawn back into the cage from which he had fled for freedom and life.

How quickly he had become accustomed to the air of deference in Mr. Stretton’s continual use of his newly acquired title — ”my lord.” Why not? It was his right.