“At any rate, old man, I was a fool to ask your opinion, for I might have known beforehand what it would be. You had as good as said you were in the plot with uncle, and advised me to marry Alice, so you are put out by finding that you are ridiculously mistaken. I can only say, that as you would have doubtless acted so much more wisely in the matter than I have done, I wish you had been in my place.” “I wish to heaven that I had been, Frank,” Prescott said, with an earnest sadness. “Upon my word, I wish you had, Prescott, for I do believe that you love Alice; although why, if you do, you should have been urging me on to marry her, is more than I can make out.” “I wished you to marry her, Frank, because, above all things, 1 should want to see her happy.” “Then why in the name of fortune don’t you marry her, and make her happy yourself, Prescott?” “Because she would not let me, Frank.” “Pooh, nonsense, Prescott! we know very well that she does not care for me, thank goodness; and, therefore, it is all the more likely that she may for you.” Prescott did not care to pursue the subject farther, for he did not wish his friend to see that he felt any serious interest in the matter. When Frank Maynard had left the house in Lowndes Square, Alice Heathcote did not for some time carry out the intention she had expressed of going downstairs to pacify her uncle. As she sat in her low easy-chair before the fire, not leaning back, but with her figure bowed, her hands listlessly clasping each other, and a look of weary hopelessness upon her face, she needed comfort too much to be able to dispense it. Alice had suffered a severe shock; one of those shocks which cast a shade over the whole life. The pain of a rejection—or, perhaps, more properly speaking, the duration of that pain—is in almost exact proportion to the amount of hope which was previously entertained. Instances are not wanting, indeed, where a perfectly hopeless attachment has embittered a whole existence; but those who so suffered must have been endowed either with a peculiarly sensitive organisation, or an ill-regulated mind.