her coldness was due to the simple fact that she had not
yet learned to give her heart away. And so he had persevered, being
ever thoroughly intent on his purpose, till he was told by herself
that her love was given to this other man.

Then he knew that it behoved him to set some altered course of life
before him. He could not shoot his rival or knock him over the head,
nor could he carry off his girl, as used to be done in rougher times.
There was nothing now for a man in such a catastrophe as this but
submission. But he might submit and shake off his burden, or submit
and carry it hopelessly. He told himself that he would do the latter.
She had been his goddess, and he would not now worship at another
shrine. And then ideas came into his head,--not hopes, or purposes,
or a belief even in any possibility,--but vague ideas, mere castles
in the air, that a time might come in which it might be in his power
to serve her, and to prove to her beyond doubting what had been the
nature of his love. Like others of his family, he thought ill of
Lopez, believing the man to be an adventurer, one who would too
probably fall into misfortune, however high he might now seem to hold
his head. He was certainly a man not standing on the solid basis of
land, or of Three per Cents,--those solidities to which such as the
Whartons and Fletchers are wont to trust. No doubt, should there be
such fall, the man's wife would have other help than that of her
rejected lover. She had a father, brother, and cousins, who would
also be there to aid her. The idea was, therefore, but a castle in
the air. And yet it was dear to him. At any rate he resolved that he
would live for it, and that the woman should still be his goddess,
though she was the wife of another man, and might now perhaps never
even be seen by him. Then there came upon him, immediately almost
after her marriage, the necessity of writing to her. The task was one
which, of course, he did not perform lightly.

He never said a word of this to anybody else;--but his brother
understood it all, and in a somewhat silent fashion fully sympathised
with him. John could not talk to him about love, or mark passages of
poetry for him to read, or deal with him at all romantically; but he
could take care that his brother had the best horses to ride, and the
warmest corner out shooting, and that everything in the house should
be done for his brother's comfort. As the squire looked and spoke
at Longbar