live in my thoughts of you."

Her voice trembled with emotion in those last words. She slid from
Percival's arm, and timidly sat down (and he beside her) on a little
mound under the single chestnut-tree, that threw its shade over the
garden.

Both were silent for some moments,--Percival, with grateful ecstasy;
Helen, with one of those sudden fits of mysterious melancholy to which
her nature was so subjected.

He was the first to speak. "Helen," he said gravely, "since I have known
you, I feel as if life were a more solemn thing than I ever regarded it
before. It seems to me as if a new and more arduous duty were added to
those for which I was prepared,--a duty, Helen, to become worthy of you!
Will you smile? No, you will not smile if I say I have had my brief
moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand,
stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a
sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with
tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned
musingly over the boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to
me, when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank to build up,
such dreams became less and less frequent. Is it not true that wealth
makes us contented to be obscure? Yes; I understand, while I speak, why
poverty itself befriends, not cripples, Ardworth's energies. But since I
have known you, dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than
ever. He who claims you should be--must be--something nobler than the
crowd. Helen,"--and he rose by an irresistible and restless impulse,--"I
shall not be contented till you are as proud of your choice as I of
mine!"