[Pg 100]

Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream

Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head

Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse

The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,

Or startle Nero in his golden house.

"Good stuff," Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did you write it?"

"The night when you were out of town," Ernest rejoined.

"I see," Reginald replied.

There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused Ernest's attention.

"What do you see?" he asked quickly.

"Nothing," Reginald replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state of nerves is still far from satisfactory."

[Pg 101]

[Pg 101]

XVIII

After Ernest's departure Ethel Brandenbourg's heart was swaying hither and thither in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into chaos. A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words, reechoing with an ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love. His jewelled sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique. Ethel clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from Reginald's lips had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the 

 Prev. P 43/80 next