d not get to nature in his tone. He
spoke aloud a little sentence now and then, that had the ring of a
despairing tenderness. Nothing of the sort inhabited his written words,
wherein a strained philosophy and ironic resignation went on stilts. "I
should desire to see you once before I take a step that some have not
considered more than commonly serious," came toward the conclusion; and
the idea was toyed with till he signed his name. "A plunge into the deep
is of little moment to one who has been stripped of all clothing. Is he
not a wretch who stands and shivers still?" This letter, ending with a
short and not imperious, or even urgent, request for an interview, on the
morrow by the 'fruitless tree,' he sealed for delivery into Cornelia's
hands some hours before the time appointed. He then wrote a clear
business letter to his lawyer, and one of studied ambiguity to a cousin
on his mother's side. His father's brother, Percival Barrett, to whom the
estates had gone, had offered him an annuity of five hundred pounds:
"though he had, as his nephew was aware, a large family." Sir Purcell had
replied: "Let me be the first to consider your family," rejecting the
benevolence. He now addressed his cousin, saying: "What would you think
of one who accepts such a gift?--of me, were you to hear that I had bowed
my head and extended my hand? Think this, if ever you hear of it: that I
have acceded for the sake of winning the highest prize humanity can
bestow: that I certainly would not have done it for aught less than the
highest." After that he went to his narrow bed. His determination was to
write to his uncle, swallowing bitter pride, and to live a pensioner, if
only Cornelia came to her tryst, "the last he would ask of her," as he
told her. Once face to face with his beloved, he had no doubt of his
power; and this feeling which he knew her to share, made her reluctance
to meet him more darkly suspicious.

As he lay in the little black room, he thought of how she would look when
a bride, and of the peerless beauty towering over any shades of
earthliness which she would present. His heated fancy conjured up every
device and charm of sacredness and adoring rapture about that white
veiled shape, until her march to the altar assumed the character of a
religious procession--a sight to awe mankind! And where, when she stood
before the minister in her saintly humility, grave and white, and
tall--where was the man whose heart was now racin