e less because he had at first received him on charitable
considerations, and felt that if he had risked much in being so generous
he had also been amply rewarded by the brilliant success of his
undertaking.

When John arrived, everybody said he was "so much improved." He had got
his growth now, being close upon one and twenty years of age; his blue
eyes were deeper set; his downy whiskers had disappeared and a small
moustache shaded his upper lip; he looked more intellectual but not less
strong, though Mrs. Ambrose said he was dreadfully pale--perhaps he owed
some of the improvement observed in his appearance to the clothes he
wore. Poor boy, he had been but scantily supplied in the old days; he
looked prosperous, now, by comparison.

"We have had great additions to our society, since you left us," said the
vicar. "We have got a squire at the Hall, and a lady with a little girl
at the cottage."

"Such a nice little girl," remarked Mrs. Ambrose.

When John found out that the lady at the cottage was no other than the
lady in black to whom he had lost his heart two years and a half before,
he was considerably surprised. It would be absurd to suppose that the
boyish fancy which had made so much romance in his life for so many
months could outlast the excitements of the University. It would be
absurd to dignify such a fancy by any serious name. He had grown to be a
man since those days and he had put away childish things. He blushed to
remember that he had spent hours in writing odes to the beautiful
unknown, and whole nights in dreaming of her face. And yet he could
remember that as much as a year after he had left Billingsfield he still
thought of her as his highest ideal of woman, and still occasionally
composed a few verses to her memory, regretting, perhaps, the cooling of
his poetic ardour. Then he had gradually lost sight of her in the hard
work which made up his life. Profound study had made him more prosaic and
he believed that he had done with ideals for ever, after the manner of
many clever young fellows who at one and twenty feel that they are
separated from the follies of eighteen by a great and impassable gulf.
The gulf, however, was not in John's case so wide nor so deep but what,
at the prospect of being suddenly brought face to face, and made
acquainted, with her who for so long had seemed the object of a romantic
passion, he felt a strange thrill of surprise and embarrassment. Those
meetings of later y