the youth refused to admit that anybody’s absence was the secret of his mortification. What was she to him?--a great lady as far out of his reach as the moon or the stars, and who no doubt had forgotten his very name. These were not pleasant thoughts to season the solitude, and he sat hugging them for a great many evenings before Sir Thomas awoke, and addressed, as he generally did, a few good-humoured, stupid observations to the lad whom, to be sure, the baronet found a considerable bore, and did not know what to do with. Sir Thomas could not forget his obligations to the young man who had saved Harry’s life; and thus it was, from pure gratitude, that he made Colin miserable--though there was no gratitude at all, nor even much respect, in the summary judgment which the youth formed of the heavy ’squire. This was how matters were going on when Wodensbourne and the world, and everything human, suddenly, all at once, sustained again a change to Colin. He had been living thus, for six weary weeks--during which time he felt himself getting morose, ill-tempered, and miserable--writing sharp letters home, in which he would not confess to any special disappointment, but expressed himself in general terms of bitterness like a young misanthrope, and in every respect making himself, and those who cared for him, unhappy. Even the verses, which did very well to express the tender griefs of sentiment, had been thrown aside at this crisis; for there was nothing melodious in his feelings, and he could not say in sweet rhymes and musical cadences how angry and wretched he was. He was sitting in such a mood one dreary December evening when it was raining fast outside and everything was silent within--as was natural in a well-regulated household where the servants knew their duty, and the nursery was half a mile away through worlds of complicated passages. Sir Thomas was asleep as usual, and, with his eyes shut and his mouth open, the excellent baronet was not, as we have already said, an elevating spectacle; and, at the other end of the table, sat Colin, chafing out his young soul with such thoughts of what was not, but might have been, as youth does not know how to avoid. It was just then, when he was going over his long succession of miseries--thinking of his natural career cut short for the sake of this dreary penance of which nothing could ever come--that Colin was startled by the sound of wheels coming up the wintry avenue. He could not venture to imagine to himself what it might be, though he listened as if for life and death; he heard the sounds of an arrival and the indistinct hum of voices which he could not distinguish, without feeling that he had any right to stir from the table to inquire what it meant; and there he sat accordingly, with his hair thrust back from his forehead and his great eyes gleaming out from the noiseless atmosphere, when the door opened and a pretty figure, all eager and glowing with life, looked into the room.