in which
all our reasonings follow the distorted writhings of our pain.

And Leonard himself, amidst his other causes of disquiet, was at once
so gnawed and so humbled by his own jealousy. Helen, he knew, was still
under the same roof as Harley. They, the betrothed, could see each other
daily, hourly. He would soon hear of their marriage. She would be borne
afar from the very sphere of his existence,--carried into a loftier
region, accessible only to his dreams. And yet to be jealous of one to
whom both Helen and himself were under such obligations debased him in
his own esteem,--jealousy here was so like ingratitude. But for Harley,
what could have become of Helen, left to his boyish charge,--he who had
himself been compelled, in despair, to think of sending her from his
side, to be reared into smileless youth in his mother's humble cottage,
while he faced famine alone, gazing on the terrible river, from the
bridge by which he had once begged for very alms,--begged of that Audley
Egerton to whom he was now opposed as an equal; or flying from the
fiend that glared at him under the lids of the haunting Chatterton? No,
jealousy here was more than agony,--it was degradation, it was crime!
But, all! if Helen were happy in these splendid nuptials! Was he sure
even of that consolation? Bitter was the thought either way,--that she
should wholly forget him, in happiness from which he stood excluded as a
thing of sin; or sinfully herself remember, and be wretched!

With that healthful strength of will which is more often proportioned to
the susceptibility of feeling than the world suppose, the young man at
last wrenched himself for awhile from the iron that had entered into his
soul, and forced his thoughts to seek relief in the very objects from
which they otherwise would have the most loathingly recoiled. He aroused
his imagination to befriend his reason; he strove to divine some motive
not explained by Harley, not to be referred to the mere defeat, by
counter-scheme, of the scheming Randal, nor even to be solved by
any service to Audley Egerton, which Harley might evolve from the
complicated meshes of the election,--some motive that could more
interest his own heart in the contest, and connect itself with Harley's
promised aid in clearing up the mystery of his parentage. Nora's memoir
had clearly hinted that his father was of rank and station far beyond
her own. She had thrown the glow of her glorious fancies over the
ambit