t seen Ellinor, that, winding my arm round Roland's neck
as I found--him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in
his hands,--it was there that I said, 'Brother, we both love this woman!
My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less. Brother,
shake hands! and God speed you, for I go!'"

"Austin!" murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.

"And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while the
tears rolled down his eyes and he stamped his foot on the ground, that
he was the intruder, the interloper; that he had no hope; that he had
been a fool and a madman; and that it was for him to go! Now, while we
were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant
entered the desolate place with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking
for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the handwriting, and
while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke the
seal, he vanished.

"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had become
of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive, volcanic nature, took quick
alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at last; and after
many days found him in a miserable cottage amongst the most dreary of
the dreary wastes which form so large a part of Cumberland. He was
so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we came at last to a
compromise. We would go back to Compton. This suspense was intolerable.
One of us at least should take courage and learn his fate. But who
should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot fell on me.

"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart
that secret hope which had animated me so long, been to me a new life,
what were my sensations? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the
happiest when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more; they
are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which Heaven
meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on earth, not
as meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor, to her
father? What but a future of patient labor? And in either answer what
alternative of misery,--my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble
heart!

"Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits we had been almost the
only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of
country squires, less educated then than now; and in excuse for Ellinor
and f