Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/149

 six months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool’s Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.

About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had mistaken her own heart—she hoped he would not let it make him very unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla was right—no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.

He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of her power as she had been—and the loss of such a certainty is never pleasant.

He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one—by letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. “Handsomely and conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station—a well-