"Sir, you could help me, if you would." She clasped her hands over
his arm, and fixed her eyes on his countenance, with all the
confidence and dependence of other days.
"Did I ever refuse you anything you asked?" said he, looking down at
the little hands on his arm, and at the pale, anxious face, with its
deep, troubled eyes.
"No! and it is precisely for that reason that I ask assistance from
you now."
"I suppose you are reduced to the last necessity. What has become of
your pride, Beulah?"
"It is all here, in my heart, sir! thundering to me to walk out and
leave you, since you are so unlike yourself!"
He looked stern and indescribably sad. She glanced up an instant at
his fascinating eyes, and then, laying her head down on his arm, as
she used to do in childhood, said resolutely: "Oh, sir! you must aid me. Whom have I to advise me but you?"
"My advice has about as much weight with you as Charon's would,
could he utter it. I am an admirable counselor only so long as my
opinions harmonize with the dictates of your own will. How am I to
aid you? I went, at twelve o'clock last night, to see a dying man,
and, passing along the street, saw a light burning from your window.
Two hours later, as I returned, it glimmered there still. Why were
you up? Beulah, what is the matter with you? Has your last treatise
on the 'Origin of Ideas' run away with those of its author, and
landed you both in a region of vagaries? Remember, I warned you."
"Something worse, sir." "Perhaps German metaphysics have stranded
you on the bleak, bald cliffs of Pyrrhonism?"
"Sir, it seems to me there is a great deal of unmerited odium laid
upon the innocent shoulders of German metaphysics. People declaim
against the science of metaphysics, as if it were the disease
itself; whereas it is the remedy. Metaphysics do not originate the
trouble; their very existence proves the priority of the disease
which they attempt to relieve--"
"Decidedly a homeopathic remedy," interrupted her guardian, smiling.
"But, sir, the questions which disturb my mind are older than my
acquaintance with so-called philosophic works. They have troubled me
from my childhood."
"Nevertheless, I warned you not to explore my library," said he,
with a touch of sorrow in his voice.
"How, then, can you habitually read books which you are unwilling to
put into my hands?"