without. He asked me, in a whisper, if he
might see my uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed to the soldier of
life "learning what was not impossible" from the unerring Order-Book.

Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, and without disturbing
my uncle, stole back. I followed him, and gently closed the door.

"You must save his son," he said in a faltering voice,--"you must; and
tell me how to help you. That sight,--no sermon ever touched me more!
Now come down and receive Lady Ellinor's thanks. We are going. She wants
me to tell my own tale to my old friend Mrs. Grundy; so I go with them.
Come!"

On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up and fairly embraced
me. I need not repeat her thanks, still less the praises, which fell
cold and hollow on my ear. My gaze rested on Fanny where she stood
apart,--her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. And the
sense of all her charms; the memory of the tender, exquisite kindness
she had shown to the stricken father; the generous pardon she had
extended to the criminal son; the looks she had bent upon me on that
memorable night (looks that had spoken such trust in my presence), the
moment in which she had clung to me for protection, and her breath
been warm upon my cheek,--all these rushed over me, and I felt that the
struggle of months was undone, that I had never loved her as I loved her
then, when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there came for
the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter,
ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities
of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made
hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature
to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature
that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of
human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not.
Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed
to have no meaning, till there came other sounds which indeed woke my
sense and made my blood run cold to hear,--the tramp of the horses, the
grating of the wheels, the voice at the door that said all was ready.

Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily
and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right
hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord
Castleton had w