ournful compassion.

"Oh, that I had foreseen this! I would have placed the breadth of all
England between you and my child."

"Would you?"

"Understand me. Not because you do not possess our warm interest, our
friendship: both will always be yours. But these are external ties,
which may exist through many differences. In marriage there must be
perfect unity; one aim, one faith, one love, or the marriage is
incomplete, unholy--a mere civil contract and no more."

Lord Ravenel looked up amazed at this doctrine, then sat awhile
pondering drearily.

"Yes, you may be right," at last he said. "Your Maud is not for me,
nor those like me. Between us and you is that 'great gulf
fixed;'--what did the old fable say? I forget.--Che sara sara! I am
but as others: I am but what I was born to be."

"Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a
gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man--man, made in the image of
God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?"

"What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?"

"First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly
gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to
spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much
of youth yet remaining--with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience
won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you
feel all that you are--all that you might be!"

A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from
those listless eyes--then faded.

"You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late."

"There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world--nay, not in
the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out
of an ever-present eternity--shall we, so long as we live, or even at
our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is too
late!'"

As John spoke, in much more excitement than was usual to him, a sudden
flush or rather spasm of colour flushed his face, then faded away,
leaving him pallid to the very lips. He sat down hastily, in his
frequent attitude, with the left arm passed across his breast.

"Lord Ravenel." His voice was faint, as though speech was painful to
him.

The other looked up, the old look of reverent attention, which I
remembered in the boy-lord who came to see us at Norton Bury; in the
young "Anselmo," whose enthusiastic hero-wo