An Ambitious Man

It may be all very well for two people to make their own laws, but

they have no right to force a third to live by them.

Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world

hears of it when vice settles up.

We have a sublime contempt for public opinion theoretically so long

as it favours us. When it turns against us we suffer intensely from

the loss of what we claimed to despise.

When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save

the seed.

It is only when God and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon

their laws, that marriage is a safe investment.

The love that does not protect its object would better change its

name.

When we say OF people what we would not say TO them, we are either

liars or cowards.

The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay us.

It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some of

the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it. And day after day

she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother's

sin known in her new home.

As our fears, like our wishes, when strong and unremitting, prove to

be magnets, the result of Joy's despondent fears came in the scandal

which the Baroness had planted and left to flourish and grow in

Beryngford after her departure. An hour before the services began,

on the day of Preston Cheney's burial, Joy learned at whose rites she

was to officiate as organist. A pang of mingled emotions shot

through her heart at the sound of his name. She had seen this man

but a few times, and spoken with him but once; yet he had left a

strong impression upon her memory. She had felt drawn to him by his

sympathetic face and atmosphere, the sorrow of his kind eyes, and the

keen appreciation he had shown in her art; and just in the measure

that she had been attracted by him, she had been repelled by the

three women to whom she was presented at the same time. She saw them

all again mentally, as she had seen them on that and many other days.

Mrs Cheney and Alice, with their fretful, plain, dissatisfied faces,

and their over-burdened costumes, and the Baroness, with her cruel

heart gazing through her worn mask of defaced beauty.

She had been conscious of a feeling of overwhelming pity for the

kind, attractive man who made the fourth of that quartette. She knew

that he had obtained honours and riches from life, but she pitied him

for his home environment. She had felt so thankful for her own happy

home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet hope that

lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day, as the

quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur Stuart.