preserved an obstinate silence. She was satisfied with the hints she had
already thrown out, and absolutely refused to say more till better
authorized by the inquiries she had set on foot. Artfully she turned
from these topics of closer and more household interest to those on which
she had previously insisted, connected with the general knowledge of
mankind, and the complicated science of practical life. To fire his
genius, wing his energies, inflame his ambition above that slow,
laborious drudgery to which he had linked the chances of his career, and
which her fiery and rapid intellect was wholly unable to comprehend--save
as a waste of life for uncertain and distant objects--became her task.
And she saw with delight that Ardworth listened to her more assentingly
than he had done at first. In truth, the pain shut within his heart, the
conflict waged keenly between his reason and his passion, unfitted him
for the time for mere mechanical employment, in which his genius could
afford him no consolation. Now, genius is given to man, not only to
enlighten others, but to comfort as well as to elevate himself. Thus, in
all the sorrows of actual existence, the man is doubly inclined to turn
to his genius for distraction. Harassed in this world of action, he
knocks at the gate of that world of idea or fancy which he is privileged
to enter; he escapes from the clay to the spirit. And rarely, till some
great grief comes, does the man in whom the celestial fire is lodged know
all the gift of which he is possessed. At last Ardworth's visits ceased
abruptly. He shut himself up once more in his chambers; but the law
books were laid aside.

Varney, who generally contrived to call when Ardworth was not there,
seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise of the garden; but
he took occasion to ripen and cement his intimacy with Percival.
Sometimes he walked or (if St. John had his cabriolet) drove home and
dined with him, tete-a-tete, in Curzon Street; and as he made Helen his