omewhat coldly extended to me, I said, with the earnestness of
suppressed emotion,--

"You observed when I last saw you, that I had not yet asked you to be
my friend. I ask it now. Listen to me with all the indulgence you can
vouchsafe, and let me at least profit by your counsel if you refuse to
give me your aid."

Rapidly, briefly, I went on to say how I had first seen Lilian, and how
sudden, how strange to myself, had been the impression which that first
sight of her had produced.

"You remarked the change that had come over me," said I; "you divined
the cause before I divined it myself,--divined it as I sat there beside
you, thinking that through you I might see, in the freedom of social
intercourse, the face that was then haunting me. You know what has
since passed. Miss Ashleigh is ill; her case is, I am convinced,
wholly misunderstood. All other feelings are merged in one sense of
anxiety,--of alarm. But it has become due to me, due to all, to incur
the risk of your ridicule even more than of your reproof, by stating to
you thus candidly, plainly, bluntly, the sentiment which renders alarm
so poignant, and which, if scarcely admissible to the romance of some
wild dreamy boy, may seem an unpardonable folly in a man of my years and
my sober calling,--due to me, to you, to Mrs. Ashleigh, because still
the dearest thing in life to me is honour. And if you, who know Mrs.
Ashleigh so intimately, who must be more or less aware of her plans or
wishes for her daughter's future,--if you believe that those plans or
wishes lead to a lot far more ambitious than an alliance with me could
offer to Miss Ashleigh, then aid Mr. Vigors in excluding me from the
house; aid me in suppressing a presumptuous, visionary passion. I cannot
enter that house without love and hope at my heart; and the threshold
of that house I must not cross if such love and such hope would be a sin
and a treachery in the eyes of its owner. I might restore Miss Ashleigh
to health; her gratitude might--I cannot continue. This danger must
not be to me nor to her, if her mother has views far above such a
son-in-law. And I am the more bound to consider all this while it is yet
time, because I heard you state that Miss Ashleigh had a fortune, was
what would be here termed an heiress. And the full consciousness that
whatever fame one in my profession may live to acquire, does not
open those vistas of social power and grandeur which are opened
by professions to my