rer than the gaiety in which she had indulged
with others. This change in her manner was unremarked by her family.

The eye of love, however, looked on those slight signs in a very
different light. Did she, could she love one so unworthy? The very idea
seemed to make him feel as a new and better man. He covered his eyes
with his hands, lest any outward sign should break that blessed
illusion, and then he started, and returning recollection brought with
it momentary despair. Did she even love him--were even her parents to
consent,--his own,--for his vivid and excited fancy for one minute
imagined what in more sober moments he knew was impossible--yet even
were such difficulties removed, would he, could he take that fair and
fragile creature from a home of luxury and every comfort to poverty?
What had he to support a wife? How could they live, and what hope had
he of increasing in any way his fortune? Was he not exciting her
affections to reduce them, like his own, to despair? And could she,
beautiful and delicate as she was, could she bear the deprivation of his
lot? She would never marry without the consent of her parents, and their
approval would never be his, and even if it were, he had nothing, not
the slightest hope of gaining anything wherewith to support her; and
she, if indeed she loved him, he should see her droop and sink before
his eyes, and that he could not bear; his own misery might be endured,
but not hers. No! He paced the small apartment with reckless and
disordered steps. His own doom was fixed, nothing could now prevent
it--but hers, it might not be too late. He would withdraw from her
sight, he would leave her presence, and for ever; break the spell that
bound him near her. Ere that hasty walk in his narrow room was
completed, his resolution was fixed; he would resign his curacy, and
depart from the dangerous fascinations hovering round him.

Yet still he lingered. If he had been too presumptuous in thinking thus
of Emmeline--if he were indeed nothing to her, why should he inflict
this anguish on himself? Why need he tear himself from her? The night of
Edward's return, while in one sense it caused him misery, by the random
remark of Lord Louis, yet, by the agitation of Emmeline, the pang was
softened, though he was strengthened in his resolve. Four days
afterwards, the very evening of that day when Mr. Howard had alluded to
his neglect of duties, before Herbert and his cousins, he tendered his
resign