“No real happiness ever came of wrong-doing,” he said to himself; “we did wrong, and we are paying the price of our folly.” It was only to himself that Mr. Desmond ever said so much as this. To Emily Jerningham he was always the same--an attentive and respectful friend--patient, chivalrous, and self-sacrificing as a social Bayard; but not to be beguiled from the duties of his professional position, even by the claims of friendship. CHAPTER XI. “J’AIME: IL FAUT QUE J’ESPERE.” EUSTACE THORBURN found existence altogether a new kind of thing at the old house amongst the Berkshire woods. His sorrow for the death of his mother was no transient shadow, to be dispelled by the first bright glimpse of sunlight that fell across his pathway. It was a deep and enduring sorrow; but it was a grief which held a fixed place in his mind, apart from the common joys and vexations of life. All through those bright summer days the young man showed himself a cheerful companion, an enthusiastic student, a willing and devoted worker; and it was only by his mourning dress that those amongst whom he lived were reminded of his recent loss. But every night, in the stillness of his own room, the familiar agony came back to his breast; memory and imagination travelled again upon the beaten track; and he thought of his mother’s joyless womanhood and lonely death with a pain as bitter as that which he had felt when he stood beside her newly made grave. Such things as these are not to be forgotten. Are they not the “pathetic minor” which underlies all the harmonies of earth, heard more or less distinctly, but silent never? The one clue which his mother’s letter afforded had been sedulously followed up by Eustace. The stranger calling himself Hardwick was the writer of a book first published in the year ’43; and a book of some repute, as the young man gathered from the letters of his unknown father. Eustace had Mrs. Willows’ authority for the fact that the book was some kind of novel or romance; and acting upon this information, he devoted himself for three consecutive days to an examination of the critical magazines and periodicals of that year in the reading-room of the British Museum. The result of his labours was not particularly satisfactory. So many romances published within the year were spoken of as the best novels of the season, or as works bearing the seal of genius, or as the promise of greater things from the matured mind of the writer, that it needed much sifting of all this chaff before the amount of genuine wheat contained therein could be fairly estimated. But at last, after a careful study of the _Literary Gazette_ and _Athenæum_, the quarterlies and monthlies, Eustace Thorburn selected, from a long list of brilliant successes and best novels of the season, three books, each of which seemed to bear upon it the stamp of something greater than amiable mediocrity.