to one for whom he entertained that deep and noble
love which is something stronger than brotherly, for with brotherly
affection it combines gratitude and reverence. He knew, too, that
his friend was oppressed by a haunting sorrow, of which the cause was
divined by one, not revealed by the other.

To leave him, so beloved, alone with that sorrow in strange lands, was a
thought not to be cherished by a friend so tender; for in the friendship
of this man there was that sort of tenderness which completes a nature,
thoroughly manlike, by giving it a touch of the woman's.

It was a day which in our northern climates is that of winter: in the
southern clime of Naples it was mild as an English summer day, lingering
on the brink of autumn; the sun sloping towards the west, and already
gathering around it roseate and purple fleeces; elsewhere the deep blue
sky was without a cloudlet.

Both had been for some minutes silent; at length the man reclining on
the grass--it was the younger man--said suddenly, and with no previous
hint of the subject introduced, "Lay your hand on your heart, Tom, and
answer me truly. Are your thoughts as clear from regrets as the heavens
above us are from a cloud? Man takes regret from tears that have ceased
to flow, as the heavens take clouds from the rains that have ceased to
fall."

"Regrets? Ah, I understand, for the loss of the girl I once loved to
distraction! No; surely I made that clear to you many, many, many months
ago, when I was your guest at Moleswich."

"Ay, but I have never, since then, spoken to you on that subject. I did
not dare. It seems to me so natural that a man, in the earlier struggle
between love and reason, should say, 'Reason shall conquer, and
has conquered;' and yet--and yet--as time glides on, feel that the
conquerors who cannot put down rebellion have a very uneasy reign.
Answer me not as at Moleswich, during the first struggle, but now, in
the after-day, when reaction from struggle comes."

"Upon my honour," answered the friend, "I have had no reaction at all.
I was cured entirely, when I had once seen Jessie again, another man's
wife, mother to his child, happy in her marriage; and, whether she was
changed or not,--very different from the sort of wife I should like to
marry, now that I am no longer a village farrier."

"And, I remember, you spoke of some other girl whom it would suit you
to marry. You have been long abroad from her. Do you ever think of
her,--thi