sought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forced
on him arose perhaps from idle motives,--a jest, it might be, of one of
his old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some more
credulous admirer. But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either of
these suppositions. Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or so
extravagant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity was
mixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common
acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his fate,
this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and the
privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may feel at
noises in the dark. That day he could apply no more, he could not settle
back to his Law Reports. He took two or three unquiet turns up and down
his smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and enclosure, seized his
hat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging strides, into the open
air.

But still the letter haunted him. "And if," he said almost audibly,--"if
I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart
like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--" He paused, sighed, shook his
rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then I
could steal myself into a girl's good graces! Man's esteem I may
command, though poor; woman's love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh!
every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of will
scarcely cut up into a lover."

Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his
way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house
where Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apart
from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down a
narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in which a