Tourmalin’s Time Cheques

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CHAPTER I.

Tourmalin's First Cheque, and How he Took It.

Fidelity Rewarded.--Love's Catechism.--Brain-fag.--A
Timely Recollection.--The Experiment, and some Startling
Results.--Question Time.--"Dear Friends."--A Compromise.


Peter Tourmalin's probation was at an end, and, what was more, he
had come through the ordeal triumphantly. How he managed this, he
scarcely knew; no doubt he was aided by the consciousness that the
extra hours which he felt himself most liable to mis-spend had
been placed beyond his disposal. At all events, when he met Sophia
again, he had been able to convince her that her doubts of his
constancy, even under the most trying conditions, were entirely
undeserved. Now he was receiving his recompense: his engagement to
Sophia was no longer conditional, but a recognised and irrevocable
fact. It is superfluous to say that he was happy. Sophia had set
herself to repair the deficiencies in his education and culture;
she took him to scientific lectures and classical concerts, and
made him read standard authors without skipping. He felt himself
daily acquiring balance and seriousness, and an accurate habit of
thought, and all the other qualities which Sophia wished him to
cultivate.

Still, there were moments when he felt the need of halting and
recovering his wind, so to speak, in the steep and toilsome climb
to her superior mental level--times when he felt that his overtaxed
brain absolutely required relaxation of some sort.

He felt this particularly one dreary morning, late in November, as
he sat in his London chambers, staring with lack-lustre eyes at the
letter he had that day received from his betrothed. For although
they met nearly every day, she never allowed one to pass without