e imprisoned and kept to hard labor for
the term of six calendar months."

Then the prisoner was removed; the court and the spectators dispersed to
dine and amuse themselves; the reporters rushed off to carry their last
copy to the evening newspapers; and the great tide of life swept by on
its appointed course. No foundering, ship on its iron-bound coast, no
broken heart that sinks beneath its waves, disturbs the law-abiding ebb
and flow of the vast ocean of humanity.

BOOK V.

LOVE.

"Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?"

ROBERT BROWNING.

CHAPTER XXVII.

COURTSHIP.

Busy as Sydney Campion was, at this juncture of his career, public
affairs were, on the whole, less engrossing to him than usual; for a new
element had entered into his private life, and bade fair to change many
of its currents.

The rector's education of his son and daughter had produced effects
which would have astonished him mightily could he have traced their
secret workings, but which would have been matter of no surprise to a
psychologist.

He himself had been in the main an unsuccessful man, for, although he
had enjoyed many years of peace and quiet in his country parish, he had
never attained the objects with which he set out in life. Like many
another man who has failed, his failure led him to value nothing on
earth so highly as success. It is your fortunate man who can afford to
slight life's prizes. The rector of Angleford was never heard to utter
soothing sentiments to the effect that "life may succeed in that it
seems to fail," or that heaven was the place for those who had failed on
earth. He did not believe it. Failure was terrible misfortune in his
eyes: intellectual failure, greatest of all. Of course he wanted his
children to be moral and religious; it was indeed important that they
should be orthodox and respectable, if they wanted to get on in the
world; but he had no such passion of longing for their spiritual as he
had for their mental development. Neither was it money that he wished
them to acquire, save as an adjunct; no man had more aristocratic
prejudices against trade and pride of purse than Mr. Campion; but he
wanted them--and especially he wanted Sydney--to show intellectual
superiority to the rest of the world, and by that superiority to gain
the good things of life. And of all these good thing