d his arms, and contemplated them both
silently,--and his own eyes were moist. "This heart," thought he, "will
be worth the winning!"

He drew aside Leonard, and whispered, "Soothe, but encourage and support
her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later."

It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley.

"She was not weeping when you left her?" asked L'Estrange.

"No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that
fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often."

Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to
Leonard, said, "Keep your promise, and write often for the first year. I
would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually."

"Drop! Ah, my Lord!"

"Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from
the sorrows of the past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but
step by step, into a new life. You love each other now, as do two
children,--as brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the
love be the same? And is it not better for both of you that youth
should open upon the world with youth's natural affections free and
unforestalled?"

"True! And she is so above me," said Leonard, mournfully.

"No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not
that, believe me."

Leonard shook his head.

"Perhaps," said Harley, with a smile, "I rather feel that you are above
me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become
jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to
be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet how can she like me as she
ought, if her heart is to be full of you?"

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and
speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent and his voice
kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood, and
in Leonard's his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet's heart gave
back no echo,--suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard
walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, "Strange, strange,
so mere a child! this cannot be love! Still, what else to love is there
left to me?"

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen,
and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home,
to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary
phantom. Courage still, Leonard! These are the