development of Lali's life was
influenced by his judgment and decision. He had been more to her than
General Armour, Mrs. Armour, or Marion. Schooled as he was in all the
ways of the world, he had at the same time a mind as sensitive as a
woman's, an indescribable gentleness, a persuasive temperament. Since,
years before, he had withdrawn from the social world and become
a recluse, many of his finer qualities had gone into an indulgent
seclusion. He had once loved the world and the gay life of London, but
some untoward event, coupled with a radical love of retirement, had sent
him into years of isolation at Greyhope.

His tutelar relations with Lali had reopened many an old spring
of sensation and experience. Her shy dependency, her innocent
inquisitiveness, had searched out his remotest sympathies. In teaching
her he had himself been re-taught. Before she came he had been satisfied
with the quiet usefulness and studious ease of his life. But in her
presence something of his old youthfulness came back, some reflection of
the ardent hopes of his young manhood. He did not notice the change
in himself. He only knew that his life was very full. He read later at
nights, he rose earlier in the morning. But unconsciously to himself,
he was undergoing a change. The more a man's sympathies and emotions
are active, the less is he the philosopher. It is only when one has
withdrawn from the more personal influence of the emotions that one's
philosophy may be trusted. One may be interested in mankind and still
be philosophical--may be, as it were, the priest and confessor to all
comers. But let one be touched in some vital corner in one's nature,
and the high, faultless impartiality is gone. In proportion as Richard's
interest in Lali had grown, the universal quality of his sympathy had
declined. Man is only man. Not that his benefactions as lord-bountiful
in the parish had grown perfunctory, but the calm detail of his interest
was not so definite. He was the same, yet not the same.

He was not aware of any difference in himself. He did not know that
he looked younger by ten years. Such is the effect of mere personal
sympathy upon a man's look and bearing. When, therefore, one bright May
morning, the family at Greyhope, himself excluded, was ready to start
for London, he had no thought but that he would drop back into his old
silent life, as it was before Lali came, and his brother's child was
born. He was not conscious that he wa