his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship awkward, and all
manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and worthless. To what end?
sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he was relieved
of his father's society, what was the good of anything? Whatever he did-
-whichever path he selected, led back to Raynham. And whatever he did,
however wretched and wayward he showed himself, only confirmed Sir Austin
more and more in the truth of his previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the
youth's groom, had to give the baronet a report of his young master's
proceedings, in common with Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell,
Tom spoke out. "He do ride like fire every day to Pig's Snout," naming
the highest hill in the neighbourhood, "and stand there and stare, never
movin', like a mad 'un. And then hoam agin all slack as if he'd been
beaten in a race by somebody."

"There is no woman in that!" mused the baronet. "He would have ridden
back as hard as he went," reflected this profound scientific humanist,
"had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast expanses, and seek
shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for distances betokens
emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an image
we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty."

Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of cynicism.

"Exactly," said the baronet. "As I foresaw. At this period an insatiate
appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing but the
quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will
satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied! Hence his
bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and
purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and roam
through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs earth has