There is always, to the afflicted, a certain charm in the depth and bitterness of eloquent misanthropy.

And Dalibard, who professed not to be a man-hater, but a world-scorner, had powers of language and of reasoning commensurate with his astute intellect and his profound research.

His society became not only a relief, it grew almost a want, to that stern sorrower.

But whether alarmed or not by the influence she felt him gradually acquiring, or whether, through some haughty desire to rise once more aloft from the state of her rival and her lover, she made one sudden effort to grasp at the rank from which she had been hurled.

The only living person whose connection could re-open to her the great world, with its splendours and its scope to ambition, was Charles Vernon.