But the illusion of passion may deal as disturbingly with moral rank as with social.
It was his first love.

Years before, in the vacation before he went to college, his boyish mind had been crossed, by a fancy for a pretty cousin a little older than himself, who had been very kind indeed to Lord Maxwell's heir.

But then came Cambridge, the flow of a new mental life, his friendship for Edward Hallin, and the beginnings of a moral storm and stress.

When he and the cousin next met, he was quite cold to her.

She seemed to him a pretty piece of millinery, endowed with a trick of parrot phrases.