mournfully.

"But you did not desert her. When Pandora's box was opened, they say
Hope lingered last--"

"False, false," said Leonard; "a heathen's notion. There are deities
that linger behind Hope,--Gratitude, Love, and Duty."

"Yours is no common nature," exclaimed Harley, admiringly, "but I must
sound it more deeply hereafter: at present I hasten for the physician; I
shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close
air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the
old fable. Wherever Gratitude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me
that Hope is there too, though she may be often invisible, hidden behind
the sheltering wings of the nobler deities."

Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a brightness
over the whole room, and went away. Leonard stole softly towards the
grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the
roof-tops, he murmured, "O Thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful! how it
comforts me now to think that, though my dreams of knowledge may have
sometimes obscured the heavens, I never doubted that Thou wert there!
as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud! "So, for a few
minutes, he prayed silently, then passed into Helen's room, and sat
beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned
with a physician; and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw
amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale, and muttering,
"I need not disgrace my calling,--I need not be the mendicant now"--held
the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as
the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during