Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/178

THE IVORY TOWER "I don't think there's a chance of it," Haughty said, "and I hold that if any such fear is your only difficulty you may be quite at your ease. Not only do I so see it," he went on, "but I know why I do."

Cissy just waited. "You consider that because she refused Horton Vint she'll decline marriage altogether?"

"I think that throws a light," this gentleman smiled—"though it isn't all my ground. She turned me down, two years ago, as utterly as I shall ever have been turned in my life—and if I chose so to look at it the experience would do for me beautifully as that of an humiliation served up to a man in as good form as he need desire. That it was, that it still is when I live it through again; that it will probably remain, for my comfort—in the sense that I'm likely never to have a worse. I've had my dose," he figured, "of that particular black draught, and I've got the bottle there empty on the shelf."

"And yet you signify that you're all the same glad?" Cissy didn't for the instant wholly follow.

"Well, it all came to me then; and that it did all come is what I have the advantage of now—I mean, you see, in being able to reassure you as I do. I had some wonderful minutes with her—it didn't take long," Haughty laughed. "We saw in those few minutes, being both so horribly 164