himself the object of
his friend's derision. But a glance at Cavendish dispelled this fear,
and presently each retired into his corner, and they sat opposite to
each other saying nothing, while the long levels of the green country
flew past them, and the clang of the going swept every other sound away.
They were alone in their compartment, each buried in his thoughts: the
one in all the absorption of a sudden and overwhelming passion, not
without a certain pride in it and in himself, although consciously
thinking of nothing but of _her_, going over and over their last
interviews, and forming visions to himself of the future; while the
other, he who was so easy-going, the cheerful companion, unexpectedly
found to be so sympathetic, but otherwise somewhat compassionately
regarded as superficial and commonplace by the youth newly plunged into
life,--the other went back into those recollections which were his,
which had been confided to none, which he had thought laid to rest
and half forgotten, but which had suddenly surged up again with so
extraordinary a revival of pain. The presence of Warrender opposite to
him, and the unconscious revelation he had made of the condition of his
own mind and thoughts, had transported Dick back again for a moment into
what seemed an age, a century past, the time when he had been as his
friend was, in the ecstasy of a youthful passion. He remembered that;
then with quick scorn and disdain turned from the thought, and plunged
into the deep abysses of possibility which he now saw opening at his
feet. He had said to himself that the past was altogether past, and that
he could begin in his own country, far from the associations of his
brief and unhappy meddling with fate, a new existence, one natural to
him, among his own people, in the occupations he understood. He had not
understood either himself or life in that strange, extravagant essay
at living which he had made and ended, as he had thought, and of which
nobody knew anything. How could he tell, he asked himself now, how much
or how little was known? Was anything ever ended until death had put the
finis to mortal history?

These young men sat opposite to each other, two excellent examples of
the well-born, well-bred young Englishman, admirably dressed, with that
indifference to and ease in their well-fitting garments, that easy and
careful simplicity, which only the Anglo-Saxon seems able to attain to
in such apparel; Warrender, indeed,