long as her hand is free. And of this fear,
and of this applicant, there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn.
After this the narrative, to judge by the dates, pauses for days and
weeks, as if the writer had grown weary and listless,--suddenly to
reopen in a new strain, eloquent with hopes and with fears never known
before. The first person was abruptly assumed,--it was the living "I"
that now breathed and moved along the lines. How was this? The woman was
no more a shadow and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed the
intense and vivid sense of individual being; and love spoke loud in the
awakened human heart.

A personage not seen till then appeared on the page. And ever
afterwards this personage was only named as "He," as if the one and sole
representative of all the myriads that walk the earth. The first notice
of this prominent character on the scene showed the restless, agitated
effect produced on the writer's imagination. He was invested with
a romance probably not his own. He was described in contrast to the
brilliant boy whose suit she had feared, pitied, and now sought to
shun,--described with a grave and serious, but gentle mien, a voice that
imposed respect, an eye and lip that showed collected dignity of will.
Alas? the writer betrayed herself, and the charm was in the contrast,
not to the character of the earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving
Leonard to explore and guess his way through the gaps and chasms of
the narrative, it is time to place before the reader what the narrative
alone will not reveal to Leonard.

CHAPTER XVI.

Nora Avenel had fled from the boyish love of Harley L'Estrange,
recommended by Lady Lansmere to a valetudinarian relative of her own,
Lady Jane Horton, as companion. But Lady Lansmere could not believe it
possible that the lowborn girl could long sustain her generous pride,
and reject the ardent suit of one who could offer to her the prospective
coronet of a countess. She continually urged upon Lady Jane the
necessity of marrying Nora to some one of rank less disproportioned to
her own, and empowered that lady to assure any such wooer of a dowry far
beyond Nora's station. Lady Jane looked around, and saw in the outskirts
of her limited social ring a young solicitor, a peer's natural son, who
was on terms of more than business-like intimacy with the fashionable
clients whose distresses made the origin of his wealth. The young man
was handsome, well-dressed,