I left the Librarian to his books, and took my way into the drawing-room. There I found only Clara Thornhill, seated by the window, and with a mournful shade on her countenance, which habitually was cheerful and sunny. I attributed the shade to the guilty Henry, and my conjecture proved right; for after some small-talk on various matters, I found myself suddenly admitted into her innocent confidence. Henry was unhappy! Unreasonable man! A time had been when Henry had declared that the supremest happiness of earth would be to call Clara his! Such happiness then seemed out of his reach; Clara’s parents were ambitious, and Henry had no fortune but “his honour and his sword.” Percival Tracey, _Deus ex machinâ_, had stepped in—propitiated Clara’s parents by handsome settlements. Henry’s happiness was apparently secured. Percival had bestowed on him an independent income, had sought to domicile him in his own neighbourhood by the offer of a charming cottage which Tracey had built by the sea-side as an occasional winter residence for himself; had proposed to find him occupation as a magistrate—nay, as a commanding officer of gallant volunteers—in vain— “He was all for deeds of arms; Honour called him to the field.” The trophies of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep. Henry had been moving heaven and earth to get removed into a regiment which was ordered abroad, not exactly for what we call a war, but for one of those smaller sacrifices of human life which are always going on somewhere or other in distant corners of our empire, and make less figure in our annals than they do in our estimates. Such trivial enterprises might at least prepare his genius and expedite his promotion. “Mox in reluctantes dracones,” &c.