and I will kneel at your feet, and beg your pardon for my vain
follies, and go back to my ware, and work, and not repine. Say it!
You are silent? Then I implore you, still as peer and gentleman, to
let the honest love save the maiden from the wooing that will blight
her peace and blast her name! And now, Lord Hastings, I wait your
gracious answer."

The sensations experienced by Hastings, as Alwyn thus concluded, were
manifold and complicated; but, at the first, admiration and pity were
the strongest.

"My poor friend," said he, kindly, "if you thus love a demoiselle
deserving all my reverence, your words and your thoughts bespeak you
no unworthy pretender; but take my counsel, good Alwyn. Come not--
thou from the Chepe--come not to the court for a wife. Forget this
fantasy."

"My lord, it is impossible! Forget I cannot, regret I may.

"Thou canst not succeed, man," resumed the nobleman, more coldly, "nor
couldst if William Hastings had never lived. The eyes of women
accustomed to gaze on the gorgeous externals of the world are blinded
to plain worth like thine. It might have been different had the
donzell never abided in a palace; but as it is, brave fellow, learn
how these wounds of the heart scar over, and the spot becomes hard and
callous evermore. What art thou, Master Nicholas Alwyn," continued
Hastings, gloomily, and with a withering smile--"what art thou, to ask
for a bliss denied to me--to all of us,--the bliss of carrying poetry
into life, youth into manhood, by winning--the FIRST LOVED? But think
not, sir lover, that I say this in jealousy or disparagement. Look