y were added to
those for which I was prepared,--a duty, Helen, to become worthy of
you! Will you smile? No, you will not smile if I say I have had my
brief moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand,
stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a
sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with
tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned
musingly over the boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to
me, when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank to build up,
such dreams became less and less frequent. Is it not true that wealth
makes us contented to be obscure? Yes; I understand, while I speak, why
poverty itself befriends, not cripples, Ardworth's energies. But since
I have known you, dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than
ever. He who claims you should be--must be--something nobler than the
crowd. Helen,"--and he rose by an irresistible and restless impulse,--"I
shall not be contented till you are as proud of your choice as I of
mine!"

It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were cast from
him forever. The unusual weight and gravity of his words, to which his
tone gave even eloquence; the steady flash of his dark eyes; his erect,
elastic form,--all had the dignity of man. Helen gazed on him silently,
and with a heart so full that words would not come, and tears overflowed
instead.

That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms
around her,--it was his first embrace,--and kissed the tears away.

"How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?"

"Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are like
prayers,--they speak to Heaven--and of you!"

A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the
sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.

CHAPTER XII. SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.

Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that
day, though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those
animal spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and
the obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayety
did not communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at him
suspiciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guilty
man.

"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly. "What has disturbed you?"

"It is nothing,--or, at least, would seem nothi