nk of her still as your future wife? Can you love her? Can you,
who have once loved so faithfully, love again?"

"I am sure of that. I love Emily better than I did when I left England.
We correspond. She writes such nice letters." Tom hesitated, blushed,
and continued timidly, "I should like to show you one of her letters."

"Do."

Tom drew forth the last of such letters from his breast-pocket.

Kenelm raised himself from the grass, took the letter, and read slowly,
carefully, while Tom watched in vain for some approving smile to
brighten up the dark beauty of that melancholy face.

Certainly it was the letter a man in love might show with pride to a
friend: the letter of a lady, well educated, well brought up, evincing
affection modestly, intelligence modestly too; the sort of letter in
which a mother who loved her daughter, and approved the daughter's
choice, could not have suggested a correction.

As Kenelm gave back the letter, his eyes met his friend's. Those were
eager eyes,--eyes hungering for praise. Kenelm's heart smote him for
that worst of sins in friendship,--want of sympathy; and that uneasy
heart forced to his lips congratulations, not perhaps quite sincere, but
which amply satisfied the lover. In uttering them, Kenelm rose to his
feet, threw his arm round his friend's shoulder, and said, "Are you not
tired of this place, Tom? I am. Let us go back to England to-morrow."
Tom's honest face brightened vividly. "How selfish and egotistical I
have been!" continued Kenelm; "I ought to have thought more of you, your
career, your marriage,--pardon me--"

"Pardon you,--pardon! Don't I owe to you all,--owe to you Emily herself?
If you had never come to Graveleigh, never said, 'Be my friend,' what
should I have been now? what--what?"

The next day the two friends quitted Naples _en route_ for England, not
exchanging many words by the way. The old loquacious crotchety humour
of Kenelm had deserted him. A duller companion than he was you could not
have conceived. He might have been the hero of a young lady's novel.
It was only when they parted in London, that Kenelm evinced more secret
purpose, more external emotion than one of his heraldic Daces shifting
from the bed to the surface of a waveless pond.

"If I have rightly understood you, Tom, all this change in you, all this
cure of torturing regret, was wrought, wrought lastingly,--wrought so as
to leave you heart-free for the world's actions and a home's pea