hat we are unable to drive our thoughts
into that channel in which we wish them to flow? He had thought much
of her last words, and was minded to attempt to do something as she
would have had him do it;--not that he might enjoy his life, but that
he might make it useful. But as he sat there, he could not think of
the real future,--not of the future as it might be made to take this
or that form by his own efforts; but of the future as it would have
been had she been with him, of the glorious, bright, beautiful future
which her love, her goodness, her beauty, her tenderness would have
illuminated.

Till he had seen her his heart had never been struck. Ideas,
sufficiently pleasant in themselves, though tinged with a certain
irony and sarcasm, had been frequent with him as to his future
career. He would leave that building up of a future family of
Marquises,--if future Marquises there were to be,--to one of those
young darlings whose bringing-up would manifestly fit them for the
work. For himself he would perhaps philosophize, perhaps do something
that might be of service,--would indulge at any rate his own views as
to humanity;--but he would not burden himself with a Countess and a
nursery full of young lords and ladies. He had often said to Roden,
had often said to Vivian, that her ladyship, his stepmother, need not
trouble herself. He certainly would not be guilty of making either
a Countess or a Marchioness. They, of course, had laughed at him,
and had bid him bide his time. He had bided his time,--as they had
said,--and Marion Fay had been the result.

Yes;--life would have been worth the having if Marion Fay had
remained to him. It was thus he communed with himself as he sat there
on the tomb. From the moment in which he had first seen her in Mrs.
Roden's house he had felt that things were changed with him. There
had come a vision before him which filled him full of delight. As he
learned to know the tones of her voice, and the motion of her limbs,
and to succumb to the feminine charms with which she enveloped him,
all the world was brightened up to his view. Here there was no
pretence of special blood, no assumption of fantastic titles, no
claim to superiority because of fathers and mothers who were in
themselves by no means superior to their neighbours. And yet there
had been all the grace, all the loveliness, all the tenderness,
without which his senses would not have been captivated. He had never
known his want