" he added, looking at me with a strange eagerness that was
pathetic, and made the tears return to my eyes, but this time out of
tenderness,--"promise me that whatever happens, you will accept the
trust I am going to leave you."

I ran to his side, and kneeling, raised my eyes to his,--"Forgive me,
father! I promise faithfully."

Only a few words more need to be said concerning this phase of my life.
That night I wrote to Mr. Spence. Gratitude and friendship will not make
up for the absence of love, but whatever there can be of consolation in
these substitutes I sent to him. Why was it that as I penned the lines
which were to disappoint his hopes, I was vaguely conscious that my
interest in his theories was already less? So difficult is it in life to
determine precisely how far our beliefs are decided by our associations!
But it is not to be supposed that because I admit this after the lapse
of years, the consciousness of which I speak was at that time more than
a secret one, which I shrank from confessing even to myself. Genuine
were the tears I shed in private for many days. My life seemed to me a
blank, and I had lost the motive of action. For allowing my father to be
right, and the principles advocated by Mr. Spence to be monstrous and
absurd, I had been too intimately connected with the system not to feel
a great void in my existence at severing my relations with it. What was
to take its place?

I had to undergo, moreover, one or two disagreeable interviews with my
Aunt Agnes before the matter was finally settled. In the intensity of
his disappointment, Mr. Spence applied to her and asked her to endeavor
to alter my resolution. She sent for me, and though she did not disguise
her surprise that her favorite should wish to marry at all, she was
unequivocal in the expression of her opinion that I should never get
such another chance. As I remained obdurate, she accused me of a
deliberate attempt to trifle with his affections. I had already ruined
the life of one man of genius, she said, who though a wanderer from the
right path might reasonably have become a noble worker but for my
influence; and now I was about to blight the happiness of one whose
equal was to be found only a few times in a century. She even went to my
father, and represented to him the folly I would commit in refusing such
an offer. I was not present at the interview; but Aunt Agnes, as she
came out of the library into the room where I was sitting