Very scattered and desultory thoughts were they, at one time over the Alps and with 'long-agoes': nights at Rome clashing with mornings on the Campagna; vast salons crowded with people of many nations, all more or less busy with that great traffic which, whether it take the form of religion, or politics, or social intrigue, hate, love, or rivalry, makes up what we call 'the world'; or there were sunsets dying away rapidly--as they will do--over that great plain outside the city, whereon solitude and silence are as much masters as on a vast prairie of the West; and he thought of times when he rode back at nightfall beside Nina Kostalergi, when little flashes would cross them of that romance that very worldly folk now and then taste of, and delight in, with a zest all the greater that the sensation is so new and strange to them.

Then there was the revulsion from the blaze of waxlights and the glitter of diamonds, the crash of orchestras and the din of conversation, the intoxication of the flattery that champagne only seems to 'accentuate,' to the unbroken stillness of the hour, when even the footfall of the horse is unheard, and a dreamy doubt that this quietude, this soothing sense of calm, is higher happiness than all the glitter and all the splendour of the ball-room, and that in the dropping words we now exchange, and in the stray glances, there is a significance and an exquisite delight we never felt till now; for, glorious as is the thought of a returned affection, full of ecstasy the sense of a heart all, all our own, there is, in the first half-doubtful, distrustful feeling of falling in love, with all its chances of success or failure, something that has its moments of bliss nothing of earthly delight can ever equal.

To the verge of that possibility Walpole had reached--but gone no further--with Nina Kostalergi.

The young men of the age are an eminently calculating and prudent class, and they count the cost of an action with a marvellous amount of accuracy.

Is it the turf and its teachings to which this crafty and cold-blooded spirit is owing?
Have they learned to 'square their book' on life by the lessons of Ascot and Newmarket, and seen that, no matter how probably they 'stand to win' on this, they must provide for that, and that no caution or foresight is enough that will not embrace every casualty of any venture?
There is no need to tell a younger son of the period that he must not marry a pretty girl of doubtful family and no fortune.