w--I have given way before all the world. What
have I done with all the jewels of my youth? Thrown them before
swine!"

"Come, George; you are hardly seven-and-twenty yet."

"No, hardly; and I have no profession, no fortune, no pursuit, and
no purpose. I am here, sitting on the broken stone of an old tomb,
merely because it is as well for me to be here as elsewhere. I have
made myself to be one as to whose whereabouts no man need make
inquiry--and no woman. If that black, one-eyed brute, whom I thrashed
a-top of the pyramid, had stuck his knife in me, who would have been
the worse for it? You, perhaps--for six weeks or so."

"You know there are many would have wept for you."

"I know but one. She would have wept, while it would be ten times
better that she should rejoice. Yes, she would weep; for I have
marred her happiness as I have marred my own. But who cares for me,
of whose care I can be proud? Who is anxious for me, whom I can dare
to thank, whom I may dare to love?"

"Do we not love you at Hurst Staple?"

"I do not know. But I know this, that you ought to be ashamed of me.
I think Adela Gauntlet is my friend; that is, if in our pig-headed
country a modest girl may love a man who is neither her brother nor
her lover."

"I am sure she is," said Arthur; and then there was another pause.
"Do you know," he continued, "I once thought--"

"Thought what?"

"That you were fond of Adela."

"So I am, heartily fond of her."

"But I mean more than that."

"You once thought that I would have married her if I could. That is
what you mean."

"Yes," said Wilkinson, blushing to his eyes. But it did not matter;
for no one could see him.

"Well, I will make a clean breast of it, Arthur. Men can talk here,
sitting in the desert, who would be as mute as death at home in
England. Yes; there was once a moment, once _one_ moment, in which I
would have married her--a moment in which I flattered myself that I
could forget Caroline Waddington. Ah! if I could tell you how Adela
behaved!"

"How did she behave? Tell me--what did she say?" said Arthur, with
almost feverish anxiety.

"She bade me remember, that those who dare to love must dare to
suffer. She told me that the wounded stag, 'that from the hunter's
aim has ta'en a hurt,' must endure to live, 'left and abandoned
of his velvet friends.'--And she told me true. I have not all
her courage; but I will take a lesson from her, and learn to
suffer--quietly, without a