which he must
travel whether he will or not,--a road bare and dusty and
companionless, devoid of shade, or rest, or joy, or that love that
could transform the barrenness into a "flowery mead."

"He that loses hope"--says Congreve--"may part with anything." To
Scrope, just now, it seems as though hope and he have parted company
forever. The past has been so dear, with all its vague beliefs and
uncertain dreamings,--all too sweet for realization,--that the present
appears unbearable.

The very air seems dark, the sky leaden, the clouds sad and lowering.
Vainly he tries to understand how he has come to love, with such a
boundless passion, this girl, who loves him not at all, but has
surrendered herself wholly to one unworthy of her,--one utterly
incapable of comprehending the nobility and truthfulness of her
nature.

The world, that only yesterday seemed so desirable a place, to-day has
lost its charm.

"What is life, when stripped of its disguise? A thing to be desired it
cannot be." With him it seems almost at an end. An unsatisfactory
thing, too, at its best,--a mere "glimpse into the world of might have
been."

Some words read a week ago come to him now, and ring their changes on
his brain. "Rien ne va plus,"--the hateful words return to him with a
pertinacity not to be subdued. It is with difficulty he refrains from
uttering them aloud.

"No; he does not disapprove," says Clarissa, interrupting his
reflections at this moment: "he has given his full consent to my
engagement." She speaks somewhat slowly, as if remembrance weighs
upon her. "And, even if he had not, there is still something that must
give me happiness: it is the certainty that Horace loves me, and that
I love him."

Though unmeant, this is a cruel blow. Sir James turns away, and,
paling visibly,--had she cared to see it,--plucks a tiny piece of bark
from the old tree against which he is leaning.

There is something in his face that, though she understands it not,
moves Clarissa to pity.

"You will wish me some good wish, after all, Jim, won't you?" she
says, very sweetly, almost pathetically.

"No, I cannot," returns he with a brusquerie foreign to him. "To do so
would be actual hypocrisy."

There is silence for a moment: Clarissa grows a little pale, in her
turn. In _his_ turn, he takes no notice of her emotion, having his
face averted. Then, in a low, faint, choked voice, she breaks the
silence.

"If I had been wise," she says, "I sh