'He--he was the last person to know.'

'He told me,' said Ethel, hurrying it out in a fright, 'that you went
away--out of generosity--not to interfere with his happiness.'

Then she felt as if she had done a shocking thing, and waited
anxiously, while Dr. Spencer deliberately made a deep hole in the
shingle with his stick. 'Well,' at last he said, 'I thought that
matter was unknown to all men--above all to Dick!'

'It was only after you were gone, that he put things together and made
it out.'

'Did--she--know?' said Dr. Spencer, with a long breath.

'I cannot tell,' said Ethel.

'And how or why did he tell you?' (rather hurt.)

'It was when first you came. I am sure no one else knows it. But he
told me because he could not help it; he was so sorry for you.'

They walked the whole length of the parade, and had turned before Dr.
Spencer spoke again; and then he said, 'It is strange! My one vision
was of walking on the sea-shore with her; and that just doing so with
you should have brought up the whole as fresh as five-and-thirty years
ago!'

'I wish I was more like her,' said Ethel.

No more was wanting to make him launch into the descriptions, dear to a
daughter's heart, of her mother in her sweet serious bloom of young
womanhood, giving new embellishments to the character already so
closely enshrined in his hearer's heart, the more valuable that the
stream of treasured recollection flowed on in partial oblivion of the
person to whom it was addressed, or, at least, that she was the child
of his rival; for, from the portrait of the quiet bright maiden, he
passed to the sufferings that his own reserved nature had undergone
from his friend's outspoken enthusiasm. The professor's visible
preference for the youth of secure prospects, had not so much
discouraged as stung him; and in a moment of irritation at the
professor's treatment, and the exulting hopes of his unconscious
friend, he had sworn to himself, that the first involuntary token of
regard from the young lady towards one or the other, should decide him
whether to win name and position for her sake, or to carry his slighted
passion to the utmost parts of the earth, and never again see her face.

'Ethel,' he said, stopping short, 'never threaten Providence--above
all, never keep the threat.'

Ethel scarcely durst speak, in her anxiety to know what cast the die,
though with all Dr. Spencer's charms, she could not but pity the
delusion that could