'Where are the sounds that swam along

The buoyant air when I was young?

The last vibration now is o'er,

And they who listened are no more;

Ah! let me close my eyes and dream.'

W. S. LANDOR.

The idea of Helstone had been suggested to Mr. Bell's waking mind

by his conversation with Mr. Lennox, and all night long it ran

riot through his dreams. He was again the tutor in the college

where he now held the rank of Fellow; it was again a long

vacation, and he was staying with his newly married friend, the

proud husband, and happy Vicar of Helstone. Over babbling brooks

they took impossible leaps, which seemed to keep them whole days

suspended in the air.

Time and space were not, though all other

things seemed real. Every event was measured by the emotions of

the mind, not by its actual existence, for existence it had none.

But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness--the warm

odours of flower and herb came sweet upon the sense--the young

wife moved about her house with just that mixture of annoyance at

her position, as regarded wealth, with pride in her handsome and

devoted husband, which Mr. Bell had noticed in real life a

quarter of a century ago. The dream was so like life that, when

he awoke, his present life seemed like a dream. Where was he? In

the close, handsomely furnished room of a London hotel! Where

were those who spoke to him, moved around him, touched him, not

an instant ago?

Dead! buried! lost for evermore, as far as

earth's for evermore would extend. He was an old man, so lately

exultant in the full strength of manhood. The utter loneliness of

his life was insupportable to think about. He got up hastily, and

tried to forget what never more might be, in a hurried dressing

for the breakfast in Harley Street.

He could not attend to all the lawyer's details, which, as he

saw, made Margaret's eyes dilate, and her lips grow pale, as one

by one fate decreed, or so it seemed, every morsel of evidence

which would exonerate Frederick, should fall from beneath her

feet and disappear. Even Mr. Lennox's well-regulated professional

voice took a softer, tenderer tone, as he drew near to the

extinction of the last hope. It was not that Margaret had not

been perfectly aware of the result before. It was only that the

details of each successive disappointment came with such

relentless minuteness to quench all hope, that she at last fairly

gave way to tears. Mr. Lennox stopped reading.

'I had better not go on,' said he, in a concerned voice. 'It was

a foolish proposal of mine. Lieutenant Hale,' and even this

giving him the title of the service from which he had so harshly

been expelled, was soothing to Margaret, 'Lieutenant Hale is

happy now; more secure in fortune and future prospects than he

could ever have been in the navy; and has, doubtless, adopted his

wife's country as his own.'




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