n no being who had ever heard of Harold, except George Yolland,
who came when he was too ill to talk, and we went on with the
conversation that had been broken off weeks before, with such comfort
as it could give us in such a loss as ours.

He walked all the way back with me, and I was frightened to see how
tired he looked. I took him to Mrs. Long for the refreshment she loved
to give, and begged for the pony for him to ride home on, and a boy to
fetch it back.

It was wonderful how much more blue there was in the sea the next day,
how the evergreens glistened, and how beautiful and picturesque the old
house grew; and when I went out in the morning sunshine, for once,
inclined to admit some beauty in the staggering black-legged and
visaged lambs, and meditating a walk to the village, I saw Dermot
coming across the yard, so wearily and breathlessly, that I could only
say, "How could you?"

He looked up piteously. "You don't forbid me?" he said.

I almost cried as I told him it was only his fatigue that I objected
to; and indeed he was glad enough to take Dora's now vacated place on
the great sofa, while we talked of Viola. Writing to her had been, of
course, impossible for him, and he had only had two short notes from
her, so meaningless that I thought she wrote them fearing to disturb
him while he was ill; but he muttered an ominous line from Locksley
Hall, vituperated Piggy, and confessed that his ground for doing so was
that his mother reported Viola as pleased with foreign life, and happy
with her cousins. I said it was his mother's way, and he replied,
"Exactly so; and a girl may be worried into anything." A slight
dispute on that score cheered him a little, for he showed himself
greatly depressed. He was going--as soon as he had gathered a little
strength--back to the duties he had promised to fulfil on his own
property, but he hated the thought, was down-hearted as to the chances
of success, and distrustful of himself among discouragements, and the
old associations he had made for himself. "It is a different thing
without Alison to look to and keep one up," he said.

"There are higher motives," was my stupid speech.

"It is precious hard on a poor fellow to be left alone with his higher
motives, as you call them, before he has well begun to act on his
lower."

And then, I don't know how, he began talking drearily, almost as if I
was not there, of his having once begun to fancy he could do something