He turned pale. “And now hear the good news I have brought you from Newcastle.” Oh! these little iron wills, how is a great artist to fight three hundred and sixty-five days against such an antagonist? Every day saw a repetition of these dialogues, in which genius made gallant bursts into the air, and strong, hard sense caught him on his descent, and dabbed glue on his gauzy wings. Old age and youth see life so differently. To youth, it is a story-book, in which we are to command the incidents, and be the bright exceptions to one rule after another. To age it is an almanac, in which everything will happen just as it has happened so many times. To youth, it is a path through a sunny meadow. To age, a hard turnpike: Whose travelers must be all sweat and dust, when they are not in mud and drenched: Which wants mending in many places, and is mended with sharp stones. Gatty would not yield to go down to Newhaven and take a step against his love, but he yielded so far as to remain passive, and see whether this creature was necessary to his existence or not. Mrs. G. scouted the idea. “He was to work, and he would soon forget her.” Poor boy! he wanted to work; his debt weighed on him; a week's resolute labor might finish his first picture and satisfy his creditor. The subject was an interior. He set to work, he stuck to work, he glued to work, his body--but his heart? Ah, my poor fellow, a much slower horse than Gatty will go by you, ridden as you are by a leaden heart. Tu nihil invita facies pingesve Minerva. It would not lower a mechanical dog's efforts, but it must yours. He was unhappy. He heard only one side for days; that side was recommended by his duty, filial affection, and diffidence of his own good sense. He was brought to see his proceedings were eccentric, and that it is destruction to be eccentric. He was made a little ashamed of what he had been proud of. He was confused and perplexed; he hardly knew what to think or do; he collapsed, and all his spirit was fast leaving him, and then he felt inclined to lean on the first thing he could find, and nothing came to hand but his mother. Meantime, Christie Johnstone was also thinking of him, but her single anxiety was to find this eighty pounds for him. It is a Newhaven idea that the female is the natural protector of the male, and this idea was strengthened in her case. She did not fully comprehend his character and temperament, but she saw, by instinct, that she was to be the protector. Besides, as she was twenty-one, and he only twenty-two, she felt the difference between herself, a woman, and him, a boy, and to leave him to struggle unaided out of his difficulties seemed to her heartless. Twice she opened her lips to engage the charitable “vile count” in his cause, but shame closed them again; this would be asking a personal favor, and one on so large a scale. Several days passed thus; she had determined not to visit him without good news.