pon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there
like a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There
was much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that
stood out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his
fate. Alas! the book seller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard
came back to him the next day a new man; and it seemed even to himself
as if he had lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh, that she had been
by my side!" thought he. "Oh, that I could have felt the touch of her
confiding hand; that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of
this life, that had sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and
sought to tower aloft from a deluge, her mild look had spoken to me
of innocent, humble, unaspiring childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still
necessary to her,--still the sole guardian and protector,--then could I
say to myself; 'Thou must not despair and die! Thou hast her to live
and to strive for.' But no, no! Only this vast and terrible London,--the
solitude of the dreary garret, and those lustrous eyes, glaring alike
through the throng and through the solitude."

CHAPTER XVIII.

On the following Monday Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door
to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor.
A few days before, embrowned with healthful travel, serene light in his
eye, simple trust on his careless lip, Leonard Fairfield had stood at
that threshold. Now again he stood there, pale and haggard, with a cheek
already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working
thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting
heavily on his whole aspect.

"I call by appointment," said the boy, testily, as the servant stood
irresolute. The man gave way. "Master is just gone out to a patient:
please to wait, sir;" and he showed him into the little parlour. In a
few moments, two other patients were admitted. These were women,
and they began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard's unsocial
thoughts. He saw that the door into the doctor's receiving-room was half
open, and, ignorant of the etiquette which holds such penetralia as
sacred, he walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into
the doctor's own wellworn chair, and muttered to himself, "Why did
he tell me to come? What new can he think of for me? And if a favour,
should I take it? He has given me the means of bread by work: that is
all I have a right to a