t she was so utterly beyond his reach. Weak and wavering as he was
in many things, he was not weak enough to abandon himself altogether
to unavailing sorrow. He knew that work alone could preserve him
from sinking--hard, constant, unflinching work, that one great cure
for all our sorrow, that only means of adapting ourselves to God's
providences.

So he set himself to work--not a lazy, listless reading of counted
pages; not history at two volumes a week, or science at a treatise a
day; but to such true work as he found it in him to do, working with
all his mind and all his strength. He had already written and was
known as a writer; but he had written under impulse, carelessly,
without due regard to his words or due thought as to his conclusions.
He had written things of which he was already ashamed, and had put
forth with the _ex cathedra_ air of an established master ideas which
had already ceased to be his own. But all that should be altered now.
Then he had wanted a quick return for his writing. It had piqued him
to think that the names of others, his contemporaries, were bruited
about the world, but that the world knew nothing of his own. Harcourt
was already a noted man, while he himself had done no more than
attempted and abandoned a profession. Harcourt's early success had
made him an early author; but he already felt that his authorship
was unavailing. Harcourt's success had been solid, stable, such as
men delight in; his had as yet resulted only in his all but forced
withdrawal from the only respectable position which he had achieved.

And now Harcourt's success was again before him. Harcourt had now as
his own that which he had looked to as the goal of all his success,
the worldly reward for which he had been willing to work. And yet
what was Harcourt as compared with him? He knew himself to be of
a higher temperament, of a brighter genius, of greater powers. He
would not condescend even to compare himself to this man who had so
thoroughly distanced him in the world's race.

Thinking, and feeling, and suffering thus, he had begun to work
with all the vehemence of which he was master. He would ask for no
speedy return now. His first object was to deaden the present misery
of his mind; and then, if it might be so, to vindicate his claim
to be regarded as one of England's worthy children, letting such
vindication come in its own time.

Such being the state of his mind, his father's arrival did not
contribute