sprung from himself, there would have been hope for
him. Unhappily, it was dependent on her who inspired it. He resolved
that life should be put on a fresh trial in her person; and expecting
that naturally to fail, of which he had always entertained a base
conception, he was perforce brought to endow her with unexampled
virtues, in order to keep any degree of confidence tolerably steadfast
in his mind. The lady accepted the decorations thus bestowed on her,
with much grace and willingness. She consented, little aware of her
heroism, to shine forth as an 'ideal;' and to this he wantonly pinned
his faith. Alas! in our world, where all things must move, it becomes,
by-and-by, manifest that an 'ideal,' or idol, which you will, has not
been gifted with two legs. What is, then, the duty of the worshipper?
To make, as I should say, some compromise between his superstitious
reverence and his recognition of facts. Cornelia, on her pedestal,
could not prefer such a request plainly; but it would have afforded her
exceeding gratification, if the man who adored her had quietly taken her
up and fixed her in a fresh post, of his own choosing entirely, in the
new circles of changeing events. Far from doing that, he appeared to be
unaware that they went, with the varying days, through circles, forming
and reforming. He walked rather as a man down a lengthened corridor,
whose light to which he turns is in one favourite corner, visible till
he reaches the end. What Cornelia was, in the first flaming of his
imagination around her, she was always, unaffected by circumstance,
to remain. It was very hard. The 'ideal' did feel the want--if not of
legs--of a certain tolerant allowance for human laws on the part of her
worshipper; but he was remorselessly reverential, both by instinct and
of necessity. Women are never quite so mad in sentimentalism as men.

We have now looked into the hazy interior of their systems--our last
halt, I believe, and last examination of machinery, before Emilia quits
England.

About the time of the pairing of the birds, and subsequent to the
Brookfield explosion, Cornelia received a letter from her lover, bearing
the tone of a summons. She was to meet him by the decayed sallow--the
'fruitless tree,' as he termed it. Startled by this abruptness, her
difficulties made her take counsel of her dignity. "He knows that these
clandestine meetings degrade me. He is wanting in faith, to require
constant assurances. He will n