ause of the infinitude and vastness of nature,
breathing power and expectation into man:

"Effort, and expectation and desire--
And something evermore about to be!"

He flung the words upon the wind, which scattered them as soon as they
were uttered, merely that he might give them a bitter denial, reject for
himself, now and always, the temper they expressed. He had known it
well, none better!--gone to bed, and risen up with it--the mere joy in
the "mere living." It had seasoned everything, twined round everything,
great and small--a day's trout-fishing or deer-stalking; a new book, a
friend, a famous place; then politics, and the joys of power.

Gone! Here he was, hurrying back to England, to take perhaps in his
still young hand the helm of her vast fortunes; and of all the old
"expectation and desire," the old passion of hope, the old sense of the
magic that lies in things unknown and ways untrodden, he seemed to
himself now incapable. He would do his best, and without the political
wrestle life would be too trifling to be borne; but the relish and the
savor were gone, and all was gray.

* * * * *

Ah!--he remembered one or two storm-walks with Kitty in their engaged or
early married days--in Scotland chiefly. As he trudged up this Swiss
pass he could see stretches of Scotch heather under drifting mist, and
feel a little figure in its tweed dress flung suddenly by the wind and
its own soft will against his arm. And then, the sudden embrace, and the
wet, fragrant cheek, and her Voice--mocking and sweet!

Oh, God! where was she now? The shock of her disappearance from Venice
had left in some ways a deeper mark upon him than even the original
catastrophe. For who that had known her could think of such a being,
alone, in a world of strangers, without a peculiar dread and anguish?
That she was alive he knew, for her five hundred a year--and she had
never accepted another penny from him since her flight--was still drawn
on her behalf by a banking firm in Paris. His solicitors, since the
failure of their first efforts to trace her after Cliffe's death, had
made repeated inquiries; Ashe had himself gone to Paris to see the
bankers in question. But he was met by their solemn promise to Kitty to
keep her secret inviolate. Madame d'Estrees supplied him with the name
of the convent in which Kitty had been brought up; but the mother
superior denied all knowledge of her. Meanwhile no c