CHAPTER XXIX.

AN OMINOUS VISITOR.

MONTANA went home that night in a mood of utter depression. That was strange to him. He had never had, even in his boyhood, the glowing exuberant animal spirits which are like wings to carry some souls over the heaviest troubles, and which are the purest gift of nature, no more to be acquired by effort or culture than the poet's endowment. But he had a consistent strength of will, and a steady faith in himself, which had hitherto always upheld him against adverse conditions and

moods of depression. Now, for

his heart seemed to desert him.

the first time,

Even his faith

in himself, in his star, was shaken. He was conscious, all too keenly conscious, that he had made some great mistakes; he was sadly beginning to think that he was not the man he had hitherto believed himself to be. Where was that steady inexorable resolve on which he used to pride himself; which he had grown to regard as something godlike? He had allowed himself to fall in love, and he had failed in love. He had set his heart on marrying Geraldine Rowan, and she had rejected and baffled him; and she was going to marry a goodhumoured, weak-headed, uninteresting elderly man. It was bad enough, Montana felt, that he should have allowed himself to fall in love; to fall in love like a boy; to do what he had never really done when he was a boy. That was bad enough; but to publish his love and to fail in it; to put himself at a girl's feet and be spurned; to tell her in prophetic, commanding tones that she must marry him, and to be

quietly put aside for some one else; this was indeed humiliation. Why should he ever succeed in anything again, seeing that he had failed in this? Was this only the beginning of a course of failure? Had the tide of his fortunes turned ?

Was he growing old? Was this insane passion for a girl who did not care for him only an evidence that he was already sinking into years and into the weak fondnesses of senility? Yet he doubted if old men in their senile love felt such love as he did a passion compounded of love and hate. He sometimes positively hated Geraldine for the moment, and could have cursed her; and yet the very resolve he had lately taken was taken only in the hope of pleasing her and making her regard him as a hero. He was going to tie himself for life to Melissa Aquitaine for no other purpose whatever than that he might stand well in Geraldine's eyes. For life? How much of life was

left that would be worth having? Would life be endurable to him when he began to decay? To go steadily down into years, to lose his personal beauty and his figure, and his stately way of carrying himself, and his power to attract admiration? After all, perhaps, it was better on the whole that he should marry Melissa Aquitaine. It would lead most people not to believe that he had ever thought of marrying Geraldine Rowan and that he had been thrown aside by her. He would not take Melissa with him to America. She could stay with her father for the present; and Montana could forget for a while that he was married, and to the wrong woman.

When he reached his own door, and was taking out his latch-key, he suddenly became aware of a dark figure seated at the threshold. It might have been one of the ordinary belated and houseless wayfarers who hang about every London street, and seek the

shelter of any friendly doorway. But Montana drew back for a moment, almost as one who fears a lurking assassin. Recovering himself, however, he approached the doorway, and the figure rose, It was that of a man, and in another moment Montana knew that the man was the old Chartist, Matthew Starr. Starr had been haunting him a good deal lately, and Montana was vexed at seeing him now. He knew the old man was waiting for him, and feared that there would be a scene of some kind.

'So you have come home at last!' Starr said. He looked like a man in a mood to do something desperate. We are bound to admit. that what he actually said was, 'So you have come 'ome at last!' and Montana was conscious for the moment of a somewhat ludicrous contrast between his friend's tragic manner and his unlucky perversity of pronunciation,