He walked off by himself across
Guestwick Common, and through the woods of Guestwick Manor, up by the
big avenue of elms in Lord De Guest's park, trying to resolve how he
might rescue himself from this scrape. Here, over the same ground,
he had wandered scores of times in his earlier years, when he knew
nothing beyond the innocence of his country home, thinking of Lily
Dale, and swearing to himself that she should be his wife. Here he
had strung together his rhymes, and fed his ambition with high hopes,
building gorgeous castles in the air, in all of which Lilian reigned
as a queen; and though in those days he had known himself to be
awkward, poor, uncared for by any in the world except his mother and
his sister, yet he had been happy in his hopes,--happy in his hopes,
even though he had never taught himself really to believe that they
would be realised. But now there was nothing in his hopes or thoughts
to make him happy. Everything was black, and wretched, and ruinous.
What would it matter, after all, even if he should marry Amelia
Roper, seeing that Lily was to be given to another? But then the idea
of Amelia as he had seen her that night through the chink in the door
came upon his memory, and he confessed to himself that life with such
a wife as that would be a living death.

At one moment he thought that he would tell his mother everything,
and leave her to write an answer to Amelia's letter. Should the worst
come to the worst, the Ropers could not absolutely destroy him. That
they could bring an action against him, and have him locked up for a
term of years, and dismissed from his office, and exposed in all the
newspapers, he seemed to know. That might all, however, be endured,
if only the gauntlet could be thrown down for him by some one else.
The one thing which he felt that he could not do was, to write to
a girl whom he had professed to love, and tell her that he did not
love her. He knew that he could not himself form such words upon the
paper; nor, as he was well aware, could he himself find the courage
to tell her to her face that he had changed his mind. He knew that
he must become the victim of his Amelia, unless he could find some
friendly knight to do battle in his favour; and then again he thought
of his mother.

But when he returned home he was as far as ever from any resolve to
tell her how he was situated. I may say that his walk had done him no
good, and that he had not made up his mind to anythi