nge coincidences that sometimes happen in this world,
I took an unknown lady in to dinner a few days afterwards, and happened
to mention Willett's name. "Do you know him?" she said. "Oh yes, of
course you do!" she went on; "you are the Mr. S---- of whom he has
spoken to me." I found that my neighbour was a distant relation of
Willett's, and she told me a good deal about him. He was absolutely
alone in the world; he had been left an orphan at an early age, and had
spent his holidays with guardians and relations, with any one who would
take pity on him. "He was a clever kind of boy," she said, "melancholy
and diffident, always thinking that people disliked him. He used to
give me the air of a person who was trying to find something, and who
did not quite know where to look for it. He had a time of expansion at
Oxford, where he made friends and did well; and then he came to London,
and began to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this," she
said. "He really fell in love, or as nearly as he could, with a very
pretty and high-spirited girl, who took a great fancy to him, and
pitied him from the bottom of her heart. For five years the thing went
on. She would have married him at any time if he had asked her. But he
did not. I suppose he could not face the idea of being married. He
always seemed to be on the point of proposing to her, and then he would
lose heart at the last minute. At last she got tired of waiting, and, I
suppose, began to care for some one else; but she was very good to
Francis, and never lost patience with him. At last she told him one day
quietly that she was engaged, and hoped that they would always remain
friends. I think, do you know, that it was almost more a relief to him
than otherwise. I did my best to help him--marriage was the one thing
he wanted; if he could only have been pushed into it, he would have
made a perfect husband, because not only is he very much of a
gentleman, but he could never bear to fail any one who depended on him;
but he has got the unhappiest mind I know; the moment that he has
formed a plan, and sees his way clear, he at once begins to think of
all the reasons against it--not the selfish reasons, by any means; in
this case he reflected, I am sure, how little he had to offer; he could
not bring himself to feel that any one could really care for him; and
then, too, he never really cared for anything quite enough himself. Or
if he did, he found all sorts of refined reasons