Longingly, sickeningly almost, his thoughts turned back to Berrie Down as he walked through the streets of the accursed City (so he styled London), where he had come to seek his fortune. If the past could only be restored to him, he moaned in spirit, how differently he would act! If he only could have foreseen his present strait—if he only could have imagined such a termination to his hopes! If—if—if! So the impotent, feebly-repentant strain ran on; if—if—if—although the measure of his misery was as yet nothing like full. Berrie Down was still mortgaged for only half its value. He had his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—his regularly paid salary—his shares, which might yet bring him in some return. He was not involved past hope of extrication. Before his bills fell due again, Mr. Black would more than probably be able to meet them. The future did not lie shrouded in total darkness before him; but as he had been unreasonably sanguine, so he was now unreasonably depressed. He knew more about business, too, than had formerly been the case; he understood better that there were risks in it as well as certainties—blanks as well as prizes, and he could not blind himself to the truth that Fortune had not hitherto favoured him with so many smiles, as to justify his imagining she would never dishearten him with her frowns. Besides all this, he was for the first time since his marriage wretched in his home. He could not bear to see his wife’s sorrow—a sorrow in which she gave him no chance of sharing. The changed, worn face—the eyes heavy with weeping, the weary, unelastic step—the silent grief which found no relief in words—were so many tacit reproaches for the cold selfishness which had kept them apart through the course of the years gone by. Vaguely it began to dawn upon his understanding that nothing earthly can live for ever—that there is no plant so strong but the keenness of a prolonged frost may kill it; that if men do not enjoy and prize a blessing while it is blooming beside them, the day will surely come when they shall sigh for its fragrance, and its beauty all in vain. He had neglected his wife’s love in the years when that bright stream flowed through the fields of his existence, nourishing and making green as it poured its treasures on his unthankful heart; and now the fountain gushed no longer; the spring was dried up, the waters made no gladness in the land. Where there had been life, there was lifelessness; where there had been devotion, there was indifference; where there had been championship, there was resentment,—and Arthur did not know how to put the wrong right. He had not strength sufficient in his character to set about winning Heather for the second time—wooing the woman as he had wooed the girl.