rd and drawn, and fresh lines and furrows were
there deeper than should have been engraved by half a score of years. A
violent, passionate nature does not lightly resign the one object of
its aims and desires. Larches and firs will bear moving cautiously, for
they are well-regulated plants, and natives of a frigid zone; but
transplanting rarely succeeds in the tropics.

Harry Molyneux came to his friend's apartments early on the following
day, in a very uncomfortable and perplexed frame of mind. In the first
place, he was sensible of that depression of spirits which is always the
portion of those who are left behind when any social circle is broken up
by the removal of its principal elements. There is no such nuisance as
having to stay and put the lights out. Besides this, he was quite
uncertain in what temper Royston would be found; and apprehended some
desperate outbreak from the latter, which would bring things, already
sufficiently complicated, into a more perilous coil.

Keene's first abrupt words in part reassured him.

"Well, it is all over; and I am going straight back to England."

Harry felt so relieved that he forgot to be considerate: he could not
repress his exultation.

"Is it really all over? I am so very glad!"

"And I am not sorry," was the reply. The speaker probably persuaded
himself that he was uttering the truth; but the dreary, hopeless
expression of his stricken face gave his words the lie. It cut deep into
Molyneux's kind heart; he felt more painfully than he had ever done the
difficulty of reconciling his evident duty with the demand of an ancient
friendship; on the whole, a guilty consciousness of treachery
predominated. He was discreet enough to forbear all questions, and it
was not till long afterward that he heard an outline of part of what had
happened in the past night; it was told in a letter from Miss Tresilyan
to his wife. Had he been more inquisitive, his curiosity would scarcely
have been gratified. To do Keene justice, he guarded the secrets of
others more jealously than he kept his own: and he would have despised
himself for revealing one of Cecil's, even to his old comrade, without
her knowledge and leave. If the feeling which prompted such reticence
was not a high and delicate sense of honor, it was at least a very
efficient substitute for a profitable virtue.

"You go to England?" Molyneux went on, after a brief pause. "When do you
start? and what do you mean to do?"

Ro