ed
him to throw himself on the generosity of the Countess. He paid the
attorney some small fee, and made up his mind at once that he would
not take the lawyer's advice. He would not throw himself on the
generosity of the Countess.

There was then still living in that neighbourhood a great man, a
poet, who had nearly carried to its close a life of great honour
and of many afflictions. He was one who, in these, his latter days,
eschewed all society, and cared to see no faces but those of the
surviving few whom he had loved in early life. And as those few
survivors lived far away, and as he was but little given to move from
home, his life was that of a recluse. Of the inhabitants of the place
around him, who for the most part had congregated there since he had
come among them, he saw but little, and his neighbours said that he
was sullen and melancholic. But, according to their degrees, he had
been a friend to Thomas Thwaite, and now, in his emergency, the son
called upon the poet. Indifferent visitors, who might be and often
were intruders, were but seldom admitted at that modest gate; but
Daniel Thwaite was at once shown into the presence of the man of
letters. They had not seen each other since Daniel was a youth, and
neither would have known the other. The poet was hardly yet an old
man, but he had all the characteristics of age. His shoulders were
bent, and his eyes were deep set in his head, and his lips were thin
and fast closed. But the beautiful oval of his face was still there,
in spite of the ravages of years, of labours, and of sorrow; and the
special brightness of his eye had not yet been dimmed. "I have been
sorry, Mr. Thwaite, to hear of your father's death," said the poet.
"I knew him well, but it was some years since, and I valued him as a
man of singular probity and spirit." Then Daniel craved permission
to tell his story;--and he told it all from the beginning to the
end,--how his father and he had worked for the Countess and her girl,
how their time and then their money had been spent for her; how he
had learned to love the girl, and how, as he believed, the girl had
loved him. And he told with absolute truth the whole story, as far
as he knew it, of what had been done in London during the last nine
months. He exaggerated nothing, and did not scruple to speak openly
of his own hopes. He showed his letter to the Countess, and her note
to him, and while doing so hid none of his own feelings. Did the poet