After the death of his father, the scanty means of support which the elder Seyton had arising from the tardy justice of the government ceased at once, and no answer was returned by the corrupt minister to Albert’s application, not for a continuance of his father’s pension, but for honourable employment. One by one he was compelled to part with the several remnants of convertable property which his father had left behind him. His whole time was occupied in searching for Ada, until hope sickened into despair and a deep gloom began to spread itself like a vapour before the sun over his heart, which in happier circumstances would have throbbed with every free, noble, and generous emotion. Twice he had called upon Sir Francis Hartleton, but had not been so fortunate as to meet with him, and the second disappointment, although it was purely accidental, Albert took seriously to heart, and in the gloomy confusion of his imagination, arising from the grief that oppressed him, cemented it into an intentional slight, and never called again. The consequence of this was, that at the time of Ada’s introduction to the house of the kind and humane magistrate, she was entirely ignorant of Albert’s place of abode and condition in life. Several times since his father’s death the young man had shifted his residence, for he could not bear that his rapidly decreasing means should become a subject of remark, even although a pitying one, and now he tenanted a small room in a narrow court, near the Savoy steps in the Strand. Absolute destitution was now rapidly approaching, and he felt that the time was quickly coming when he would have had to bid adieu for ever to the most distant hope of ever again beholding Ada; and to save himself from starvation, enlisted as a private soldier in the army in which his father had held a commission. On that very morning that Ada was sitting in the little room commanding so delightful a view of the park, and conversing with Lady Hartleton, poor Albert sat in his cheerless apartment with his head resting upon his hands in a deep reverie composed of gloomy and heart depressing thoughts and anticipations. “Alas! Alas!” he cried. “My beautiful Ada, thou art lost to me for ever. Oh, why did I leave you for one moment to the mercy of that man? I am rightly punished. Having by the merest accident—by one of those happy chances of fortune that rarely occur twice, met you, Ada, when you were wandering in this great city, I madly allowed you to go from me. Oh, what blindness was that—why did not some good spirit shriek ‘beware’ in my ears? Ada—Ada, I have lost you forever!” He remained for some moments silent, and suddenly rising he cried,—