blank to him, without meaning or grace--but he had faced the blank, mournfully yet manfully, knowing that nothing better could be. Now, however, after he had been led to deceive himself, had been forced into it, after such resistance as he was capable of making to an apparent joy which was the crown of all possible and impossible wishes, now!---- The bitterness, the keen sting of disappointment, the resentment with himself for ever having consented to this delusion, all mingled with and intensified the insupportable pang that tore him asunder, the sense that it was all illusion, that no one save himself in his folly had ever thought of Diana as his object: that she had known nothing of his love, and had not even given him the hearing, the consideration, which were implied in a refusal. This it was that wounded him most wildly, driving him almost mad with its sting. Had she refused to listen to his suit, yet she would have known it at least, would have been aware that he loved her, obliged to carry the knowledge of that fact along with her wherever she went; and, being courteous and sweet, and full of tenderness for others, Pandolfini knew that in that case she would have given him many a compassionate and gentle thought. But even of this he was robbed, for she did not know. The very possibility of a hearing, the suggestion, had never been his. Diana knew nothing of his heart, had never thought of him at all, would never think of him more. Could it be possible that any man had ever had such a wrong done him? To be buoyed up with hopes which were dashed by a refusal, ah, that might have been hard to bear! but how much harder to know that these hopes had never existed, that they were delusion and mistake and nothing more! There was a stifled rage and mortification in his misery, rage with himself for ever having believed it, mortification beyond words at the depth of vanity and folly in himself which was thus revealed to him. Poor Pandolfini! it had not been vanity: but this was how in his misery it appeared to him. Fool! to think that Diana, _Diana!_ could waste any thought upon such as he!