ind his way out of the
chaos, which now seemed ruin, and now the materials out of which fine
actions and a happy life might be shaped. Three hours later he stood
at Lapham's door.

At times what he now wished to do had seemed for ever impossible, and
again it had seemed as if he could not wait a moment longer. He had
not been careless, but very mindful of what he knew must be the
feelings of his own family in regard to the Laphams, and he had not
concealed from himself that his family had great reason and justice on
their side in not wishing him to alienate himself from their common
life and associations. The most that he could urge to himself was that
they had not all the reason and justice; but he had hesitated and
delayed because they had so much. Often he could not make it appear
right that he should merely please himself in what chiefly concerned
himself. He perceived how far apart in all their experiences and
ideals the Lapham girls and his sisters were; how different Mrs. Lapham
was from his mother; how grotesquely unlike were his father and Lapham;
and the disparity had not always amused him.

He had often taken it very seriously, and sometimes he said that he
must forego the hope on which his heart was set. There had been many
times in the past months when he had said that he must go no further,
and as often as he had taken this stand he had yielded it, upon this or
that excuse, which he was aware of trumping up. It was part of the
complication that he should be unconscious of the injury he might be
doing to some one besides his family and himself; this was the defect
of his diffidence; and it had come to him in a pang for the first time
when his mother said that she would not have the Laphams think she
wished to make more of the acquaintance than he did; and then it had
come too late. Since that he had suffered quite as much from the fear
that it might not be as that it might be so; and now, in the mood,
romantic and exalted, in which he found himself concerning Lapham, he
was as far as might be from vain confidence. He ended the question in
his own mind by affirming to himself that he was there, first of all,
to see Lapham and give him an ultimate proof of his own perfect faith
and unabated respect, and to offer him what reparation this involved
for that want of sympathy--of humanity--which he had shown.

XVI.

THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring said that Lapham
had not