ke one word to her. "Edith," he said, "I have seen Mr.
Round. We can do nothing for her there."

"I feared not," said she.

"No; we can do nothing for her there."

After that Sir Peregrine took no step in the matter. What step could
he take? But he sat over his fire in his library, day after day,
thinking over it all, and waiting till those terrible assizes should
have come.

CHAPTER LVII

THE LOVES AND HOPES OF ALBERT FITZALLEN

Felix Graham, when he left poor Mary Snow, did not go on immediately
to the doctor's shop. He had made up his mind that Mary Snow should
never be his wife, and therefore considered it wise to lose no time
in making such arrangements as might be necessary both for his
release and for hers. But, nevertheless, he had not the heart to
go about the work the moment that he left her. He passed by the
apothecary's, and looking in saw a young man working sedulously at a
pestle. If Albert Fitzallen were fit to be her husband and willing
to be so, poor as he was himself, he would still make some pecuniary
sacrifice by which he might quiet his own conscience and make Mary's
marriage possible. He still had a sum of L1,200 belonging to him,
that being all his remaining capital; and the half of that he would
give to Mary as her dower. So in two days he returned, and again
looking in at the doctor's shop, again saw the young man at his work.

"Yes, sir, my name is Albert Fitzallen," said the medical aspirant,
coming round the counter. There was no one else in the shop, and
Felix hardly knew how to accost him on so momentous a subject, while
he was still in charge of all that store of medicine, and liable
to be called away at any moment to relieve the ailments of Clapham.
Albert Fitzallen was a pale-faced, light-haired youth, with an
incipient moustache, with his hair parted in equal divisions over
his forehead, with elaborate shirt-cuffs elaborately turned back,
and with a white apron tied round him so that he might pursue his
vocation without injury to his nether garments. His face, however,
was not bad, nor mean, and had there not been about him a little air
of pretension, assumed perhaps to carry off the combined apron and
beard, Felix would have regarded him altogether with favourable eyes.

"Is it in the medical way?" asked Fitzallen, when Graham suggested
that he should step out with him for a few minutes. Graham explained
that it was not in the medical way,--that it was in a way altoge