s that succeeded the repulse of the young baronet did I
resolve to take heart and to throw myself at the feet of Anna, and as
often was I deterred by the apprehension that I had nothing to render
me worthy of one so excellent, and especially of one who was the
granddaughter of the seventh English baronet. I do not pretend to
explain the connection between cause and effect, for I am neither
physician nor metaphysician; but the tumult of spirits that resulted
from so many doubts, hopes, fears, resolutions, and breakings of
resolutions, began to affect my health, and I was just about to yield to
the advice of my friends (among whom Anna was the most earnest and
the most sorrowful), to travel, when an unexpected call to attend the
death-bed of my ancestor was received. I tore myself from the rectory
and hurried up to town with the diligence and assiduity of an only son
and heir summoned on an occasion so solemn.

I found my ancestor still in the possession of his senses, though
given over by the physicians; a circumstance that proved a degree of
disinterestedness and singleness of purpose on their part that was
scarcely to be expected towards a patient who it was commonly believed
was worth more than a million. My reception by the servants and by the
two or three friends who had assembled on this melancholy occasion, too,
was sympathizing, warm, and of a character to show their solicitude and
forethought.

My reception by the sick man was less marked. The total abstraction of
his faculties in the one great pursuit of his life; a certain sternness
of purpose which is apt to get the ascendant with those who are resolute
to gain, and which usually communicates itself to the manners; and an
absence of those kinder ties that are developed by the exercise of the
more familiar charities of our existence had opened a breach between
us that was not to be filled by the simple unaided fact of natural
affinity. I say of natural affinity, for notwithstanding the doubts that
cast their shadows on that branch of my genealogical tree by which I
was connected with my maternal grandfather, the title of the king to
his crown is not more apparent than was my direct lineal descent from
my father. I always believed him to be my ancestor de jure as well as
de facto, and could fain have loved him and honored him as such had my
natural yearnings been met with more lively bowels of sympathy on his
side.

Notwithstanding the long and unnatural est