y annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in
a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common ground of
fathers, and demanded, "Why he was not justified in doing all that lay
in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon the first
creature with a pretty face he encountered?" Deliberating thus, he
lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment--the living,
burning youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took a
rigorous tone. It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that
the uncle of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme
of marrying her to his son, should not only not be thwarted in his
object but encouraged and even assisted. At least, not thwarted. Sir
Austin had no glass before him while these ideas hardened in his mind,
and he had rather forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.

Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too
preoccupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling the
hollows of the country. Over the pine-hills beyond the station a last
rosy streak lingered across a green sky. Richard eyed it while they flew
along. It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his love,
and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids. The sad beauty of
that one spot in the heavens seemed to call out to his soul to swear
to his Lucy's truth to him: was like the sorrowful visage of his
fleur-de-luce as he called her, appealing to him for faith. That
tremulous tender way she had of half-closing and catching light on the
nether-lids, when sometimes she looked up in her lover's face--as look
so mystic-sweet that it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he
saw it yonder, and his blood thrilled.

Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our
grosser being melts; and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking, stand
etherealized, trembling with new joy? They come but rarely; rarely even
in love, when we fondly think them revelations. Mere sensations they
are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the spiritual scale
than so many translucent glorious polypi that quiver on the shores, the
hues of heaven running through them. Yet in the harvest of our days
it is something for the animal to have had such mere fleshly polypian
experiences to look back upon, and they give him an horizon--pale seas
of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they do not bound him)
may find the Isl