"Yet," answered Audley, "nearly all women in the great world have had that choice once in their lives, and nearly all have thrown it away. How few of your rank really think of home when they marry-how few ask to venerate as well as to love-and how many, of every rank, when the home has been really gained, have wilfully lost its shelter; some in neglectful weariness-some from a momentary doubt, distrust, caprice-a wild fancy-a passionate fit-a trifle -a straw a dream! True, you women are ever dreamers. Common sense, common earth, is above or below your comprehension." Both now were silent. Audley first roused himself with a quick, writhing movement. "We two," said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically "we two must not longer waste time in talking sentiment. We know both too well what life, as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes, truly is. And once again, I entreat you to pause before you yield to the foolish suit of my foolish nephew. Rely on it, you will either command a higher offer for your prudence to accept; or, if you needs must sacrifice rank and fortune, you, with your beauty and your romantic heart, will see one who, at least for a fair holiday season, (if human love allows no more,) can repay you for the sacrifice. Frank Hazeldean never can." Beatrice turned away to conceal the tears that rushed to her eyes. "Think over this well," said Audley, in the softest tones of his mellow voice. "Do you remember that when you first came to England, I told you that neither wedlock nor love had any lures for me. We grew friends upon that rude avowal, and therefore I now speak to you like some sage of old, wise because standing apart and aloof from all the affections and ties that mislead our wisdom. Nothing but real love-(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it!)-nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom-the cares and fears of poverty-the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect. And all these, and much more, follow the step you would inconsiderately takean imprudent marriage." "Audley Egerton," said Beatrice, lifting her dark, moistened eyes, "you grant that real love does compensate for an imprudent marriage. You speak as if you had known such love-you! Can it be possible?" "Real love-I thought that I knew it once. Looking back with remorse, I should doubt it now but for one curse that only real love, when lost, has the power to leave evermore behind it." "What is that?" "A void here," answered Egerton, striking his heart. "Desolation !— Adieu !" He rose and left the room. "Is it," murmured Egerton, as he pursued his way through the streets "is it that, as we approach death, all the first fair feelings of young life come back to us mysteriously? Thus I have heard, or read, that in some country of old, children, scattering flowers, preceded a funeral bier." CHAPTER XV. And so Leonard stood beside his friend's mortal clay, and watched, in the ineffable smile of death, the last gleam which the soul had left there; and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining room with a step as noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as he was with watching, he had no thought of sleep. He sate himself down by the little table, and leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully. Thus time passed. He heard the clock from below strike the hours. In the house of death the sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul that we miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone -the grey, comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw, chilling light through the open doorway, into the death-room. And there, near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, set the writer did not speak of herself The bulk of the papers had been once lightly sewn to each other-they had come undone, perhaps in Burley's rude hands; but their order was easily apparent. Leonard soon saw that they formed a kind of journal-not, indeed, a regular diary, nor always relating to the things of the day. There were gaps in time-no attempt at successive narrative. Sometimes, instead of prose, a hasty burst of verse, gushing evidently from the heart sometimes all narrative was left untold, and yet, as it were, epitomised, by a single burning line-a single exclamation-of woe, or joy! Everywhere you saw records of a nature exquisitely susceptible; and where genius appeared, it was so artless, that you did not call it genius, but emotion. At the out Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a new phase in the writer's existence. Scenes, no longer of humble, work-day rural life, surround her. And a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds to the companion of the Sabbath eves. This image Nora evidently loves to paint-it is akin to her own genius-it captivates her fancy-it is an image that she (inborn artist, and conscious of her art) feels to belong to a brighter and higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the virgin's heart is not awakened-no trace of the heart yet there. The new image thus introduced is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it may be younger stillfor it is a boy that is described, with his profuse fair curls, and eyes new to grief, and confronting the sun as a young eagle's; with veins so full of the wine of life, that they overflow into every joyous whim; with nerves quiveringly alive to the desire of glory; with the frank generous nature reflexion of the sister's soul and face. rash in its laughing scorn of the world, which it has not tried. Who was this boy, it perplexed Leonard. He feared to guess. Soon, less told than implied, you saw that this companionship, however it chanced, brings fear and pain on the writer. Again, (as before,) with Mark Fairfield, there is love on the one side and not on the other; with her there is affectionate, almost sisterly, interest, admiration, gratitude--but a something of pride or of terror that keeps back love. Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which conjecture grew certainty; and he recognised, through the lapse of years, the boy lover in his own generous benefactor? Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a listener who pitied but could not sympathise. Some great worldly distinction of rank between the two became visible that distinction seemed to arm the virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier born. Then a few sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of wounded and humbled feelings-some one invested with authority, as if the suitor's parent, had interfered, questioned, reproached, counselled. And it was now evident that the suit was not one that dishonoured;-it wooed to flight, but still to marriage. And now these sentences grew briefer still, as with the decision of a strong resolve. And to these there followed a passage so exquisite, that Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was the description of a visit spent at home previous to some sorrowful departure. There rose up the glimpse of a proud and vain, but a tender wistful mother-of a father's fonder but less thoughtful love. And then came a quiet soothing scene between the girl and her first village lover, ending thus-"So she put M.'s hand into her sister's, and said: You loved me through the fancy, love her with the heart,' and left them comprehending each other, and betrothed." Leonard sighed. He understood now how Mark Fairfield saw in the homely features of his unlettered wife the A few words told the final partingwords that were a picture. The long friendless highway, stretching onon-towards the remorseless city. And the doors of home opening on the desolate thoroughfare-and the old pollard tree beside the threshold, with the ravens wheeling round it and calling to their young. He too had watched that threshold from the same desolate thoroughfare. He too had heard the cry of the ravens. Then came some pages covered with snatches of melancholy verse, or some reflections of dreamy gloom. The writer was in London, in the house of some highborn patronessthat friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of song-it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted; but to fear lest the suitor should be degraded, not the one whom he pursues-fears an alliance ill-suited to a highborn heir. And this kind of fear stings the writer's pride, and she grows harsh in her judgment of him who thus causes but pain where he proffers love. Then there is a reference to some applicant for her hand, who is pressed upon her choice. And she is told that it is her duty so to choose, and thus deliver a noble family from a dread that endures so long as her hand is free. And of this fear, and of this applicant, there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn. After this, the narrative, to judge by the dates, pauses for days and weeks, as if the writer had grown weary and listless,-suddenly to reopen in a new strain, eloquent with hopes, and with fears never known before. The first person was abruptly assumed-it was the living "I" that now breathed and moved along the lines. How was this? The woman was no more a shadow and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed the intense and vivid sense of individual being. And love spoke loud in the awakened human heart. A personage not seen till then appeared on the page. And ever afterwards this personage was only named as "He," as if the one and sole representative of all the myriads that walk the earth. The first notice of this prominent character on the scene showed the restless agitated effect produced on the writer's imagination. He was invested with a romance probably not his own. He was described in contrast to the brilliant boy whose suit she had feared, pitied, and now sought to shundescribed with a grave and serious, but gentle mien-a voice that imposed respect-an eye and lip that showed collected dignity of will. Alas! the writer betrayed herself, and the charm was in the contrast, not to the character of the earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving Leonard to explore and guess his way through the gaps and chasms of the narrative, it is time to place before the reader what the narrative alone will not reveal to Leonard. CHAPTER XVI. Nora Avenel had fled from the boyish love of Harley L'Estrange-recommended by Lady Lansmere to a valetudinarian relative of her own, Lady Jane Horton, as companion. But Lady Lansmere could not be lieve it possible that the low-born girl could long sustain her generous pride, and reject the ardent suit of one who could offer to her the prospective coronet of a countess. She continually urged upon Lady Jane the necessity of marrying Nora to some one of rank less disproportioned to her own, and empowered that lady to assure any such wooer of a dowry far beyond Nora's station. Lady Jane looked around, and saw in the outskirts of her limited social ring, a young solicitor, a peer's natural son, who was on terms of more than business-like intimacy with the fashionable clients whose distresses made the origin of his wealth. The young man was handsome, well-dressed, and bland. Lady Jane invited him to her house; and, seeing him struck dumb with the rare loveliness of Nora, whispered the hint of the dower. The fashionable solicitor, who afterwards ripened into Baron Levy, did not need that hint; for, though then poor, he relied on himself for fortune, and, unlike Randal, he had warm blood in his veins. But Lady Jane's suggestions made him sanguine of success; and when he formally proposed, and was as formally refused, his self-love was bitterly wounded. Vanity in Levy was a powerful passion; and with the vain, hatred is strong, revenge is rankling. Levy retired, concealing his rage; nor did he himself know how vindictive that rage, when it cooled into malignancy, could become, until the arch-fiend OPPORTUNITY prompted its indulgence and suggested its design. Lady Jane was at first very angry with Nora for the rejection of a suitor whom she had presented as eligible. But the pathetic grace of this wonderful girl had crept into her heart, and softened it even against family prejudice; and she gradually owned to herself that Nora was worthy of some one better than Mr Levy. Now, Harley had ever believed that Nora returned his love, and that nothing but her own sense of gratitude to his parents-her own instincts of delicacy, made her deaf to his pray ers. To do him justice, wild and headstrong as he then was, his suit would have ceased at once had he really deemed it persecution. Nor was his error unnatural; for his conversation, till it had revealed his own heart, could not fail to have dazzled and delighted the child of genius; and her frank eyes would have shown the delight. How, at his age, could he see the distinction between the Poetess and the Woman? The poetess was charmed with rare promise in a soul of which the very errors were the extravagances of richness and beauty. But the woman-no! the woman required some nature not yet undeveloped, and all at turbulent if brilliant strife with its own noble elements, but a nature formed and full grown. Harley was a boy, and Nora was one of those women who must find or fancy an Ideal that commands and almost awes them into love. Harley discovered, not without difficulty, Nora's new residence. He presented himself at Lady Jane's, and she, with grave rebuke, forbade him the house. He found it impossible to obtain an interview with Nora. He wrote, but he felt sure that his letters never reached her, since they were unanswered. His young heart swelled with rage. He dropped threats, which alarmed all the fears of Lady Lansmere, and even the prudent apprehensions of his friend, Audley Egerton. At the request of the mother, and equally at the wish of the son, Audley consented to visit at Lady Jane's, and make acquaintance with Nora. "I have such confidence in you," said Lady Lansmere, "that if you once know the girl, your advice will be sure to have weight with her. You will show her how wicked it would be to let Harley break our hearts and degrade his station." "I have such confidence in you," said young Harley, "that if you once know my Nora, you will no longer side with my mother. You will recognise the nobility which Nature only can create-you will own that Nora is worthy a rank more lofty than mine; and my mother so believes in your wisdom, that, if you plead in my cause, you will convince even her." Audley listened to both with his intelligent, half-incredulous smile; and wholly of the same advice as Lady Lansmere, and sincerely anxious to save Harley from an indiscretion that his own notions led him to regard as fatal, he resolved to examine this boasted pearl, and to find out its flaws. Audley Egerton was then in the prime of his earnest, resolute, ambitious youth. The stateliness of his natural manners had then a suavity and polish which, even in later and busier life, it never wholly lost; since, in spite of the briefer words and the colder looks by which care and power mark the official man, the Minister had ever enjoyed that personal popularity which the indefinable, external something, that wins and pleases, can alone confer. But he had even then, as ever, that felicitous reserve which Rochefaucault has called the "mystery of the body"-that thin yet guardian veil which reveals but the strong outlines of character, and excites so much of interest by provoking so much of conjecture. To the man who is born with this reserve, which is wholly distinct from shyness, the world gives credit for qualities and talents beyond those that it perceives; and such characters are attractive to others in proportion as these last are gifted with the imagination which loves to divine the unknown. At the first interview, the impression which this man produced upon Nora Avenel was profound and strange. She had heard of him before as the one whom Harley most loved and looked up to; and she recognised at once in his mien, his aspect, his words, the very tone of his deep tranquil voice, the power to which woman, whatever her intellect, never attains; and to which, therefore, she imputes a nobility not always genuine-viz., the power of deliberate purpose, and self-collected, serene ambition. The effect that Nora produced on Egerton was not less sudden. He was startled by a beauty of face and form that belonged to that rarest order, which we never behold but once or twice in our lives. He was yet more amazed to discover that the aristocracy of mind could bestow a grace that no aristocracy of birth could surpass. He was prepared for a simple, blushing village girl, and involuntarily he bowed low his proud front at the first sight of that delicate bloom, and that exquisite gentleness which is woman's surest passport to the respect of man. Neither in the first, nor the second, nor the third interview, nor, indeed, till after many interviews, could he summon up courage to commence his mission, and allude to Harley. And when he did so at last, his words faltered. But Nora's words were clear to him. He saw that Harley was not loved; and a joy that he felt as guilty, darted through his whole frame. From that interview Audley returned home, greatly agitated, and at war with himself. Often, in the course of this |