and bland. Lady Jane invited him to
her house; and, seeing him struck with the rare loveliness of Nora,
whispered the hint of the dower. The fashionable solicitor, who
afterwards ripened into Baron Levy, did not need that hint; for, though
then poor, he relied on himself for fortune, and, unlike Randal, he had
warm blood in his veins. But Lady Jane's suggestions made him sanguine
of success; and when he formally proposed, and was as formally refused,
his self-love was bitterly wounded. Vanity in Levy was a powerful
passion; and with the vain, hatred is strong, revenge is rankling. Levy
retired, concealing his rage; nor did he himself know how vindictive
that rage, when it cooled into malignancy, could become, until the
arch-fiend OPPORTUNITY prompted its indulgence and suggested its design.

Lady Jane was at first very angry with Nora for the rejection of a
suitor whom she had presented as eligible. But the pathetic grace of
this wonderful girl had crept into her heart, and softened it even
against family prejudice; and she gradually owned to herself that Nora
was worthy of some one better than Mr. Levy.

Now, Harley had ever believed that Nora returned his love, and that
nothing but her own sense of gratitude to his parents, her own instincts
of delicacy, made her deaf to his prayers. To do him justice, wild and
headstrong as he then was, his suit would have ceased at once had he
really deemed it persecution. Nor was his error unnatural; for his
conversation, till it had revealed his own heart, could not fail to have
dazzled and delighted the child of genius; and her frank eyes would have
shown the delight. How, at his age, could he see the distinction between
the Poetess and the Woman? The poetess was charmed with rare promise in
a soul of which the very errors were the extravagances of richness
and beauty. But the woman--no! the woman required some nature not yet
undeveloped, and all at turbulent, if brilliant, strife with its own
noble elements, but a nature formed and full-grown. Harley was a boy,
and Nora was one of those women who must find or fancy an Ideal that
commands and almost awes them into love.

Harley discovered, not without difficulty, Nora's new residence. He
presented himself at Lady Jane's, and she, with grave rebuke, forbade
him the house. He found it impossible to obtain an interview with Nora.
He wrote, but he felt sure that his letters never reached her, since
they were unanswered. His young