aps you may
prevail on this wilful girl--'

Theodora began a protest, and desired him to remain; but he would not,
and she found herself alone with her bewildered lover.

'What is this? what have I done?' he began.

'You have done nothing,' said she. 'It is all my own fault. The truth
will be a cure for your regrets, and I owe you an explanation. I was
engaged to one whom I had known from childhood, but we disputed--my
temper was headstrong. He rejected me, and I thought I scorned him, and
we parted. You came in my way while I was angry, before I knew that I
can never lose my feelings towards him. I know I have seemed to trifle
with you; but false shame hindered me from confessing how matters really
stood. You ought to rejoice in being freed from such as I am.'

'But with time!' exclaimed Lord St. Erme, in broken words. 'May I not
hope that time and earnest endeavours--?'

'Hope nothing,' said Theodora. 'Every one would tell you you have had a
happy escape.'

'And is this all? My inspiration!--you who were awakening me to a sense
of the greatness of real life--you who would have led me and aided me to
a nobler course--'

'That is open to you, without the evils I should have entailed on you.
I could never have returned your feelings, and it would have been misery
for both. You will see it, when you come to your senses, and rejoice.'

'Rejoice! If you knew how the thought of you is entwined in every
aspiration, and for life!'

'Do not talk so,' said Theodora. 'It only grieves me to see the pain I
have given; but it would be worse not to break off at once.'

'Must it be so?' said he, lingering before his fleeting vision.

'It must. The kindest thing by both of us is to cut this as short as
possible.'

'In that, as in all else, I obey. I know that a vain loiterer, like
myself, had little right to hope for notice from one whose mind was bent
on the noblest tasks of mankind. You have opened new views to me, and
I had dared to hope you would guide me in them; but with you or without
you, my life shall be spent in them.'

'That will be some consolation for the way I have treated you,' said
Theodora.

His face lighted up. 'My better angel!' he said, 'I will be content to
toil as the knights of old, hopelessly, save that if you hear of me
no longer as the idle amateur, but as exerting myself for something
serviceable, you will know it is for your sake.'

'It had better be for something else,' said Theodora, imp