f business waiting for me, and I sat down to it at
first resolutely; but by degrees I found my thoughts wandering from the
eternal blue-books, and the pen slipped from my hand in the midst of an
extract from a Report on Sierra Leone. My pulse beat loud and quick; I
was in that state of nervous fever which only emotion can occasion. The
sweet voice of Fanny rang in my ears; her eyes, as I had last met them,
unusually gentle, almost beseeching, gazed upon me wherever I turned;
and then, as in mockery, I heard again those words,--"One ought to be
an earl at least to aspire to-" Oh! did I aspire? Was I vain fool so
frantic, household traitor so consummate? No, no! Then what did I under
the same roof? Why stay to imbibe this sweet poison that was corroding
the very springs of my life? At that self-question, which, had I been
but a year or two older, I should have asked long before, a mortal
terror seized me; the blood rushed from my heart and left me cold, icy
cold. To leave the house, leave Fanny! Never again to see those eyes,
never to hear that voice! Better die of the sweet poison than of the
desolate exile! I rose, I opened the windows; I walked to and fro the
room; I could decide nothing, think of nothing; all my mind was in an
uproar. With a violent effort at self-mastery, I approached the table
again. I resolved to force myself to my task, if it were only to
re-collect my faculties and enable them to bear my own torture. I turned
over the books impatiently, when lo! buried amongst them, what met
my eye? Archly, yet reproachfully,--the face of Fanny herself! Her
miniature was there. It had been, I knew, taken a few days before by a
young artist whom Trevanion patronized. I suppose he had carried it into
his study to examine it, and so left it there carelessly. The painter
had seized her peculiar expression, her ineffable smile,--so charming,
so malicious; even her favorite posture,--the small head turned over the
rounded Hebe-like shoulder; the eye glancing up from under the hair. I
know not what change in my madness came over me; but I sank on my knees,
and, kissing the miniature again and again, burst into tears. Such
tears! I did not hear the door open, I did not see the shadow steal ever
the floor; a light hand rested on my shoulder, trembling as it rested--I
started. Fanny herself was bending over me!

"What is the matter?" she asked tenderly. "What has happened? Your
uncle--your family--all well? Why are you weep