"The hope of your proving your innocence!" said Mr. Driesen, with melancholy bitterness. "She will be soon cured of that hope, I fear, Charles Tyrrell. However, as you are determined, there is no use in saying any more, and I shall now leave you. If I can do anything to serve you, let me know it. If you wish to see me again, I will come; otherwise, Charles, I shall not see you again till I see you at the trial; for I am not the man I was, Charles. All this has shaken me; my corporeal frame is injured. I do not know that even my intellect is what it was. Good-by--good-by. I could be a boy, or a woman, and cry for very spite, to think of your casting away your only chance of life and happiness. If you had worn out existence, I could understand it; if you were, as I am at the end of that part of life, which comprises all that is bright and happy, and at the beginning of that part which is made up altogether of desolation and decay, I could understand it; for death is nothing but one jump into forgetfulness. But with youth, and hope, and happiness before you, I cannot make out your motives. However, fare you well, fare you well, and all I trust is, that chance may better take care of you than you take care of yourself." Charles Tyrrell bade him adieu, well knowing that, as all their views and principles were different, there was not the slightest use of entering into any argument upon the subject. He could not, indeed, help feeling a regard for Mr. Driesen, who had of late shown him much real kindness. He could not help acknowledging to himself that he had a warm, kind heart, and when, therefore, he left him, he felt some pain and grief, from which he could only free himself, by sitting down to make notes of all the matters of which he had to speak with Everard Morrison, on the following morning. Mr. Driesen, in the meantime, turned his steps back toward Harbury Park. He went slowly and sadly, indeed. Three or four times dismounted from his horse, and walked on, holding the bridle over his arm, and when he had returned, and sought his own chamber, his foot might be heard pacing it, to and fro, during the greater part of the night. He had usually breakfasted in the library, and he had not yet finished, on the morning following his interview with Charles Tyrrell, when the butler came in and told him that there was an old man without desired to speak with him. Mr. Driesen asked who it was, and the butler replied:-- "Why it is one Smithson, sir, who used to be a good deal about the house, selling fish, some twenty years ago." "Show him in," said Mr. Driesen; and the butler having done so, shut the door.