spaper then
being started by certain of his friends; a paper, as it seemed, little
likely to have commercial success, but which, after many changes of
editorship, ultimately became an established organ of Liberalism. The
agitator retained an interest in this venture, and the small income it
still continued to yield him was more than enough for his personal
needs; it enabled him to set a little aside, year after year, thus
forming a fund which, latterly, he always thought of as destined to
benefit his youngest son--the child of his second marriage.

For he did not long remain solitary, and his next adventure was
somewhat in keeping with the character he had earned in public
estimate. Living for a time in Switzerland, he there met with a young
Englishwoman, married, but parted from her husband, who was maintaining
herself at Geneva as a teacher of languages; Jerome was drawn to her,
wooed her, and won her love. The husband, a Catholic, refused her legal
release, but the irregular union was a true marriage. It had lasted for
about four years when their only child was born. In another
twelvemonth, Jerome was again a widower. A small sum of money which had
belonged to the dead woman, Jerome, at her wish, put out at interest
for their boy, if he should attain manhood. The child's name was Piers;
for Jerome happened at that time to be studying old Langland's
"Vision," with delight in the brave singer, who so long ago cried for
social justice--one of the few in Christendom who held by the spirit of
Christ.

He was now forty-five years old; he mourned the loss of his comrade, a
gentle, loving woman, whom, though she seldom understood his views of
life, his moods and his aims, he had held in affection and esteem. For
eight years he went his way alone; then, chancing to be at a seaside
place in the north of England, he made the acquaintance of a mother and
daughter who kept a circulating library, and in less than six months
the daughter became Mrs. Otway. Aged not quite thirty, tall, graceful,
with a long, pale face, distinguished by its air of meditative
refinement, this lady probably never made quite clear to herself her
motives in accepting the wooer of fifty-three, whose life had passed in
labours and experiences with which she could feel nothing like true
sympathy. Perhaps it was that she had never before received offer of
marriage; possibly Jerome's eloquent dark eyes, of which the gleam was
not yet dulled, seconded the em