as expecting Blanche to follow, pricked him at every turn. He felt
convinced he no longer cared for Blanche; he was regaining interest in
the world without, but she had left this legacy of reaction behind her.
He told himself that this too must be borne with, but all the time his
youth and natural disposition to get all that was possible out of life
were preparing him for fresh enterprise. He could no longer be happy
over nothing but the sheer joy of life, yet simple pleasures began to
appeal to him once more, as Boase noted thankfully. The daily
expectation, that absurd delicious hope, that "something" would happen,
had not yet deserted him, and once again he began to live on it.

One day there arrived a letter from Vassie--a letter written in
superlatives, a letter that made Ishmael and John-James both feel relief
in their different ways and that made the Parson very glad. Vassie had
achieved her end, the great end of mid-Victorian womanhood, and more
vital to her even than most--she was engaged to be married, and to a man
whose social position seemed, as far as her judgment could be trusted,
satisfactory. Mr. Daniel O'Connell Flynn was, according to Vassie, more
than she could have dared hope for, and if she said little as to any
personal feelings for him, Ishmael knew how unimportant that would be to
her compared with the satisfaction of her ambitions. For, as his name
denoted, he was engaged in politics--an Irish-Canadian, a Free Trader, a
Home Ruler, perhaps even a Chartist, for all Vassie said to the
contrary. The third Derby Ministry was in power, and Mr. Flynn was for
the time agitating in the Opposition; but at least he was a member of
Parliament, and what glory that was to Vassie.

Poor Vassie! What, after all, was her ambition but to attain what should
have come to her by right as daughter of the Squire of Cloom? She had
had to make it the end of her desires, for it she had had to appear what
she was not--what she ought to have been without any striving. If Mr.
Flynn were a man to whom Vassie's beauty outweighed her defects, and if
it were nothing but that with him, then was the outlook for her ultimate
happiness poor; but she was her own mistress and had to be judge of
that. At least she had not deceived him, for there came a postscript to
the rather worldly raptures. "P.S.--He knows about it all, and says it
does not matter; what he wants is me."

After Ishmael, the person most affected by the news, both