CHAPTER IX.
THUS airy Strephon tuned his lyre .-- SHENSTONE.
IN his meeting with Evelyn, Vargrave certainly exerted to the utmost all his ability and all his art.

He felt that violence, that sarcasm, that selfish complaint would not avail in a man who was not loved,--though they are often admirable cards in the hands of a man who is.

As his own heart was perfectly untouched in the matter, except by rage and disappointment,--feelings which with him never lasted very long,--he could play coolly his losing game.

His keen and ready intellect taught him that all he could now expect was to bequeath sentiments of generous compassion and friendly interest; to create a favourable impression, which he might hereafter improve; to reserve, in short, some spot of vantage-ground in the country from which he was to affect to withdraw all his forces.

He had known, in his experience of women, which, whether as an actor or a spectator, was large and various--though not among very delicate and refined natures--that a lady often takes a fancy to a suitor _after_ she has rejected him; that precisely _because_ she has once rejected she ultimately accepts him.