You can't
plead business on Sunday."

"My dear Mrs. Branston, I really am not well enough for visiting."

"But dining with us does not come under the head of visiting. We will be
quite alone, if you wish it. I shall be hurt if you refuse to come."

"If you put it in that way, I cannot refuse; but I fear you will find me
wretched company."

"I am not afraid of that. And now I must ask you to forgive me for
having wasted so much of your time, before I say good-morning."

"There has been no time of mine wasted. I have learned to know your
generous heart even better than I knew it before, and I think I always
knew that it was a noble one. Believe me, I am not ungrateful or
indifferent to so much goodness."

He accompanied her downstairs, and through the courts and passages to the
place where she had left her cab, in spite of the ticket-porter, who was
hanging about ready to act as escort. He saw her safely seated in the
hackney vehicle, and then walked slowly back to his chambers, thinking
over the interview which had just concluded.

"Poor little soul," he said softly to himself; "dear little soul! There
are men who would go to the end of the world for a woman like that; yes,
if she had not a sixpence. And to think that I, who thought myself so
strong in the wisdom of the world, should have let such a prize slip
through my fingers? For what? For a fancy, for a caprice that has brought
confusion and shame upon me--disappointment and regret."

He breathed a profound sigh. From first to last life had been more or
less a disappointment to this man. He had lived alone; lived for himself,
despising the ambitious aims and lofty hopes of other men, thinking the
best prizes this world can give scarcely worth that long struggle which
is so apt to end in failure; perfect success was so rare a result, it
seemed to him. He made a rough calculation of his chances in any given
line when he was still fresh from college, and finding the figures
against him, gave up all thoughts of doing great things. By-and-by, when
his creditors grew pressing and it was necessary for him to earn money in
some way, he found that it was no trouble to him to write; so he wrote
with a spasmodic kind of industry, but a forty-horse power when he chose
to exercise it. For a long time he had no thought of winning name or fame
in literature. It was only of late it had dawned upon him that he had
wasted labour and talent, out of which a wiser man would hav