"When I came home to-night, I had no other hope than that you and your father would consider that I had not made good my claim to become a favoured suitor, and that there was nothing left me but to make my statement and withdraw my rash pretensions. You will pardon me, Harriet, but it had never struck me that you were strong enough, or--pardon me again--that you had ever loved me well enough to attempt a _sacrifice_.

"I was a girl--very vain and frivolous--you were right."

"I come back and find you altered very much, Harriet. I find the old reserve that piqued my pride no longer there, and, instead, a something newer and more frank, a something that says, 'Trust me.' Is that a true reading?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"I am vain enough to believe in the heart growing fonder during my absence--though I have always fancied the experiment full of danger for the absent one. Say that the heart has done so--or that I did not understand you. Still the effect was the same, or I should not have the courage to tell you the great secret of my life. If I believed that you did not love me, or that you had ever loved any one else, I would not venture to put you to _this_ test."

Harriet hung down her head, and her heart beat rapidly; the old story was before her, and his very words seemed now to forbid its revelation.

His firm, self-reliant nature had never swerved from her, and he judged others by himself. His was a love that had begun from boyhood, and grown with his growth; should she raise the first suspicion against her by telling him all, when it was in her power--and only in _her_ power--to make him happy, to make amends for all by her new love for him? Let him test her how he liked now, she was a woman who looked at life seriously, and the follies of her youth were over!

They walked on silently for awhile; they went on together, playing their love-dream out, and oblivious of the matter-of-fact world hustling them in their progress.

"This is the love test--and it must be a strange, pure love to exist after I have told all," he said.

"Do you doubt me, Sidney, already?"

"I cannot tell. I cannot," he added, more pa.s.sionately, "believe in any affection strong and deep enough to last; but I can forgive, and consider natural, any love that turns to pity at the truth. Do you comprehend me?"

"Scarcely."

"Well then--_I am going blind_!"

An awful and unexpected revelation, which took her breath away, and seemed for an instant to stop her heart beating.

"Oh! Sidney--my poor Sidney--it cannot be!"

"Sooner or later, Harriet, it must be; mine is a hopeless case," he answered; "with care, and less night work, and quiet--that last means absence from all mental excitement--I may go on for a few years more; the last physician whom I have consulted even thinks he can give me ten years' grace. Now in ten years, ten of the best years of a young man's life, I ought to save, and I hope to save, sufficient to live upon. I may be over-sanguine, but if I get a good foothold I will try. And now where lives the girl who will accept a ten years' engagement, with the chance of a beggar or a blind man at the end of it?"

Harriet pressed his arm.

"Here," she answered.

"You will! There is the faith to wait, the courage to endure, and the love to sustain me. You are not afraid?"

"No--I have no fear," replied Harriet, warmly; "G.o.d knows that I _have_ changed very much, and only lately learned to understand myself. I do not fear, Sidney, for I--I have learned to love you, and, by comparison, to see how n.o.ble and high-principled you are. But oh! if I were but more worthy of you, and your deep love for me!"

"Worthy!" he echoed; "why, what have I done to deserve a life's devotion to me, save to love you, which was the most natural thing in the world.

What have I ever done to deserve the happiness of winning your love--a long legged, near-sighted gawky like me!--and such a love as shrinks not from the dark prospect ahead, but will disperse it by its brightness, and keep me from despairing. Why, in ten years time we shall not be an old couple--I shall only be one-and-thirty, and you but nine-and-twenty.

When the light goes out," he added solemnly, "you will place your hand in mine to make amends for it, and begin my new happiness by the wife's companionship; shall I be so very much to be pitied then, I wonder?"

"I hope not, Sid."

She had not called him by that name since he was a boy, and his heart thrilled at it, and took fresh hope from it.

"All this on my part, I know is very selfish," he said. "I have told you already that I am a selfish man, to wish that your youth and beauty and love should be sacrificed to my affliction. I did not think of gaining them; I was content to pa.s.s away from you, and see you allied to one more deserving, more fitting, than myself; even now, I will go away resigned, thinking you are right to give me up, if but one doubt linger at your heart."

"Not one," was the firm answer.

"I can bear all now--afterwards, a doubt would strike me down--remember that."

"Trust in me, Sid--ever."

"I will."

The hand that had rested on his arm was held in his now, and they walked on together, with their hearts as full of happiness as though blindness were a trifling calamity, scarcely worth considering under the circ.u.mstances.

Sidney had pictured so dark a prospect ahead, that this sudden change made all bright, and Harriet Wesden was happy in being able to prove that her love was unselfish and strong. She did not believe that she had ever loved any one else then--she knew that hers was a different and more intense affection, something that felt like love, and that nothing in the world could destroy. Mr. Darcy was but a phantom, far back in the mists--his own dark efforts had utterly extinguished every ray of romance, in the false light of which he had luridly shone. Strengthened by her new love, she could have broken her promise to Mattie, and told all then, trusting in him to see the truth, and believe in her henceforth; but he had spoken of the danger of excitement to him, and once again--once for all--went the story back, never to hover on the brink of discovery again!

It was a strange courtship--that of Sidney Hinchford and Harriet's--but they were happy. The calamity was in the distance, and their hearts were young and strong. Both had faith then--and of the chances and changes of life, it was not natural to dwell upon, after the one avowal had been uttered.

"Then it _is_ an engagement," he had asked hoa.r.s.ely, and she had answered "Yes," with his own frankness and boldness; and thus the path ahead seemed bright enough.

Outside the suburban retreat of the Wesdens', Sidney Hinchford had a little struggle with duty and inclination--conquering inclination with that strong will of his.

"I'll go back to the old gentleman," he said at last; "he is scarcely used to my reappearance yet, and a little makes him nervous. Good-bye, love."

A lovers parting at the iron gate, to the intense edification of the potman coming up the street with the nine o'clock beer; and then Sidney tore himself homewards, thinking what a happy fellow he was, and how the business disappointments of life had been softened by the events that had followed them. The future could not be dark with Harriet; before this he had become resigned to his calamity, bent his strong mind to regard it as inevitable; now there was to come happiness with it, and he would be more than content, he thought.

He was soon back in Suffolk Street. Mr. Wesden was in the shop talking to a short, thin man with a sallow complexion, a hooked nose, bright black eyes, and straight hair; a man dressed in black; with a rusty satin stock of the same colour, secured by an old-fashioned brooch of gold wire, in the shape of a heart.

"And her name was Mattie, you say?"

"That was the name she called herself, and went always by in this house."

"And you don't know her whereabouts?"

"I haven't an idea."

"But you think she has gone wrong, don't you?" the man asked with no small eagerness.

"Well, I hope not; but I think so."

"Who? Mattie!" cried Sidney, suddenly thrusting himself into the conversation; "our Mattie--that be--_hanged_!"

He checked himself in time to save scandalizing the ears of the gentleman in black, who twirled round with a tee-to-tum velocity and faced him.

"What do you know of her, young man?" he asked abruptly.

"What do you want to know for?" was the rejoinder.

"I wish to find her--I am very anxious to find her."

"I hope you may, if it's for her good."

"Her moral and spiritual good, sir--without a doubt."

"You can't improve her. There isn't a better or more unselfish girl in the world!"