dealism, of his
nature--a poetry and idealism not dead, as he had bitterly reckoned
them, though sorely wounded by ill-living and the disastrous issues of
his passion for Helen de Vallorbes. He seemed to apprehend the approach
of some fruitful, far-ranging, profoundly-reconciling and beneficent
event. As in the theatre at Naples, when Morabita sang, and to his
fever-stricken, brain-sick fancy the dull-coloured multitude in the
_parterre_ murmured, buzzing remonstrant as angry swarming bees, so now
a certain exaltation of feeling, exaltation of hope, came upon him. Yet
having grown, through determined rebellion and unlovely experience, not
a little distrustful of all promise of good, he turned on himself
bitterly enough, asking if he would never learn to profit by
hardly-bought, practical knowledge? If he would never contrive to cast
the simpleton wholly out of him? He had been fooled many times, fooled
there at Naples to the point of unpardonable insult and degradation.
What so probable as that he would be fooled again, now?

And so, in effort to shake off both the dominion of unfounded hope, and
the gnawing ache of inward emptiness which made that hope at once so
cruel and so dear, as the sound of wheels dying away along the lime
avenue assured him that the goodly company of church-goers had, verily
and indeed, departed, he set forth on a pilgrimage through the great,
silent house. Passing through the two libraries, the antechamber and
state drawing-room--with its gilded furniture, fine pictures and
tapestries--he reached the open corridor at the stair-head. Here the
polished, oak floor, the massive balusters, and tall, carven
newel-posts--each topped by a guardian griffin, long of tail, ferocious
of beak, and sharp of claw--showed with a certain sober cheerfulness in
the pleasant light. For, through all the great windows of the eastern
front, the sun slanted in obliquely. While in the Chapel-Room beyond,
situated in the angle of the house and thus enjoying a southern as well
as eastern aspect, Richard found a veritable carnival of misty
brightness, so that he moved across to the oriel-window--whose gray,
stone mullions and carved transomes showed delicately mellow of tone
between the glittering, leaded panes--in a glory of welcoming warmth
and sunlight. Frost and snow might linger in the hollows, but here in
the open, on the upland, spring surely had already come.

With the help of a brass ring, riveted by a stanchio