e she must have,
and clinging to this one thought hopefully within herself--

"He has made some promise, has gone to get released from it, and will
come back to say what he looked last night. He is so true I will believe
in him and wait."

She did wait, but week after week went by and Warwick did not come.

CHAPTER VII.

DULL BUT NECESSARY.

Whoever cares only for incident and action in a book had better skip
this chapter and read on; but those who take an interest in the
delineation of character will find the key to Sylvia's here.

John Yule might have been a poet, painter, or philanthropist, for Heaven
had endowed him with fine gifts; he was a prosperous merchant with no
ambition but to leave a fortune to his children and live down the memory
of a bitter past. On the threshold of his life he stumbled and fell; for
as he paused there, waiting for the first step to appear, Providence
tested and found him wanting. On one side, Poverty offered the aspiring
youth her meagre hand; but he was not wise enough to see the virtues
hidden under her hard aspect, nor brave enough to learn the stern yet
salutary lessons which labor, necessity, and patience teach, giving to
those who serve and suffer the true success. On the other hand Opulence
allured him with her many baits, and, silencing the voice of conscience,
he yielded to temptation and wrecked his nobler self.

A loveless marriage was the price he paid for his ambition; not a costly
one, he thought, till time taught him that whosoever mars the integrity
of his own soul by transgressing the great laws of life, even by so much
as a hair's breadth, entails upon himself and heirs the inevitable
retribution which proves their worth and keeps them sacred. The tie that
bound and burdened the unhappy twain, worn thin by constant friction,
snapped at last, and in the solemn pause death made in his busy life,
there rose before him those two ghosts who sooner or later haunt us all,
saying with reproachful voices,--"This I might have been," and "This I
am." Then he saw the failure of his life. At fifty he found himself
poorer than when he made his momentous choice; for the years that had
given him wealth, position, children, had also taken from him youth,
self-respect, and many a gift whose worth was magnified by loss. He
endeavored to repair the fault so tardily acknowledged, but found it
impossible to cancel it when remorse, embittered effort, and age left
him powerles