have been worse employed.

At length supper was done, and Elizabeth retired to her room. Presently,
too, Mr. Granger was called out to christen a sick baby and went
grumbling, and they were left alone. They sat in the window-place and
looked out at the quiet night.

"Tell me about yourself," said Beatrice.

So he told her. He narrated all the steps by which he had reached
his present position, and showed her how from it he might rise to the
topmost heights of all. She did not look at him, and did not answer
him, but once when he paused, thinking that he had talked enough about
himself, she said, "Go on; tell me some more."

At last he had told her all.

"Yes," she said, "you have the power and the opportunity, and you will
one day be among the foremost men of your generation."

"I doubt it," he said with a sigh. "I am not ambitious. I only work for
the sake of work, not for what it will bring. One day I daresay that I
shall weary of it all and leave it. But while I do work, I like to be
among the first in my degree."

"Oh, no," she answered, "you must not give it up; you must go on and on.
Promise me," she continued, looking at him for the first time--"promise
me that while you have health and strength you will persevere till you
stand alone and quite pre-eminent. Then you can give it up."

"Why should I promise you this, Beatrice?"

"Because I ask it of you. Once I saved your life, Mr. Bingham, and it
gives me some little right to direct its course. I wish that the man
whom I saved to the world should be among the first men in the world,
not in wealth, which is an accident, but in intellect and force. Promise
me this and I shall be happy."

"I promise you," he said, "I promise that I will try to rise because you
ask it, not because the prospect attracts me; but as he spoke his heart
was wrung. It was bitter to hear her speak thus of a future in which
she would have no share, which, as her words implied, would be a thing
utterly apart from her, as much apart as though she were dead.

"Yes," he said again, "you gave me my life, and it makes me very unhappy
to think that I can give you nothing in return. Oh, Beatrice, I will
tell you what I have never told to any one. I am lonely and wretched.
With the exception of yourself, I do not think that there is anybody who
really cares for--I mean who really sympathises with me in the world.
I daresay that it is my own fault and it sounds a humiliating thing to
say,