t in by my gyp,
and it made me faint and sick. He came in with his hand out, looking
very pale, but smiling just as he used to smile, only more sadly.
'Don't reproach me,' I said; 'I can't bear it.' 'Reproach you!' he
said--and I shall never forget the tone of affectionate wonder with
which it came, or the relief it was to me to hear it--'Reproach you!
I know how you loved him.' I broke down at that, and cried
wretchedly. I found him sitting by me. He put his hand on my shoulder
and stroked my hair. 'I have only one more thing to say,' he said, at
last. 'You will not mind my saying it, will you? Eddy had told me all
about you--he was very open with me--that you were not doing justice
to your opportunities here, not fulfilling your own ideals and
possibilities. All I ask of you is to let this be the impulse to
rise; do not let any morbid or fantastic remorse stand in your way,
and baffle you. You know that he would have been the first to have
forgiven any share of the fault that may be yours. What I wish most
earnestly for you--it is what he, if he had lived, would have wished
most--is that you should become a nobler man--as you can, I know; as
you will, I believe.' I could not speak, or answer him then; but I
have tried to do what he begged me. Perhaps you do not know--I hope
you do not--what a struggle an attempt to forget is. I could not have
believed that a memory could hang so heavily round my neck.

"He wrote to me once after, and sent me Edward's riding-whip and
flask. I never saw him again. From what Edward told me, and from the
little I saw of him myself, I knew that he was the humblest and
gravest of men. In his dealing with me, he showed himself the most
truly loving."

I was at Tredennis for a week just after this. At the end of that
time he begged me not to stay--he could bear it better alone. My
impression was that he was like a man half dazed with grief. He sat
very silent, and would do nothing; if he ever spoke, it was with
evident effort. He did not appear to be ill, only crushed and
overwhelmed. Once he broke down. He was looking over some books, and
found a notebook of Edward's, of some subject they had been reading
together. Edward had tired of the subject, and the last page was
occupied with a pen-and-ink sketch of Arthur himself, the discovery
of which, done as it had been during working hours, had been the
occasion of some affectionate strictures. He shut the book up
quickly, and literally moane