the year was out he had married for money! I knew
another instance,--I speak of myself. I loved before I was your age. Had
an angel warned me then, I would have been incredulous as you. How
that ended, no matter: but had it not been for that dream of
maudlin delirium, I had lived and acted as others of my kind and my
sphere,--married from reason and judgment, been now a useful and happy
man. Pause, then. Will you still reject me for Leonard Fairfield? For
the last time you have the option,--me and all the substance of waking
life, Leonard Fairfield and the shadows of a fleeting dream. Speak! You
hesitate. Nay, take time to decide."

HELEN.--"Ah, Lord L'Estrange, you who have felt what it is to love,
how can you doubt my answer; how think that I could be so base, so
ungrateful as take from yourself what you call the substance of waking
life, while my heart was far away, faithful to what you call a dream?"

HARLEY.--"But can you not dispel the dream?"

HELEN (her whole face one flush).--"It was wrong to call it dream! It is
the reality of life to me. All things else are as dreams."

HARLEY (taking her hand and kissing it with respect).--"Helen, you have
a noble heart, and I have tempted you in vain. I regret your choice,
though I will no more oppose it. I regret it, though I shall never
witness your disappointment. As the wife of that man, I shall see and
know you no more."

HELEN.--"Oh, no! do not say that. Why? Wherefore?"

HARLEY (his brows meeting).--"He is the child of fraud and of shame.
His father is my foe, and my hate descends to the son. He, too, the son,
filches from me--But complaints are idle. When the next few days are
over, think of me but as one who abandons all right over your actions,
and is a stranger to your future fate. Pooh! dry your tears: so long as
you love Leonard or esteem me, rejoice that our paths do not cross."

He walked on impatiently; but Helen, alarmed and wondering, followed
close, took his arm timidly, and sought to soothe him. She felt that he
wronged Leonard,--that he knew not how Leonard had yielded all hope when
he learned to whom she was affianced. For Leonard's sake she conquered
her bashfulness, and sought to explain. But at her first hesitating,
faltered words, Harley, who with great effort suppressed the emotions
which swelled within him, abruptly left her side, and plunged into the
recesses of thick, farspreading groves, that soon wrapped him from her
eye.

While thi