jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to
be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet how can she like me as she
ought, if her heart is to be full of you?"

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and
speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent and his voice
kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood, and in
Leonard's his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet's heart gave
back no echo,--suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard
walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, "Strange, strange,
so mere a child! this cannot be love! Still, what else to love is there
left to me?"

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen,
and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home, to
himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary
phantom. Courage still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart
that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic.

Another day, and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful
and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale re-opens. Life
in all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the squire farms and
hunts; and the parson preaches and chides and soothes; and Riccabocca
reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralizes on Men and
States; and Violante's dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their
lustre, and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr.
Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the Honourable Mrs. Avenel
her opera-box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and
hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, pant to become
aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the parliament,