“I’ve made a pretty mess of it this evening, and no mistake!”--thus ran his ideas--“gone and offended the governor, and rendered him as cantankerous as an old rhinoceros, so that the more I want him to do anything, the less likely he’ll be to do it. Then in my confounded good-nature, I’ve allowed that ass Knighton to detain me with his stupid prosing, so that I lost sight of the cotton-spinner, and gave him a chance of making Alice an offer--a chance of which the old fellow was inspired with wit enough to avail himself, I’m almost certain. Arthur will be preciously savage! and enough to make him--the notion of sacrificing Alice to such an old anatomy as that--a yellow-skinned brute like a resuscitated mummy, without more than two ideas in his head, and two such ideas--cash and cotton! he thinks of nothing else, asleep or awake. I wonder what answer Alice gave him; but there isn’t much doubt of that, the poor girl daren’t disobey her father--besides, women don’t refuse £20,000 a-year. Well, I wish old Crane joy of his bargain. She’ll soon get sick of him, and be miserable of course; then she’ll take to flirting with every young fellow she meets, to get rid of her _ennui_; chose out one to establish a platonic friendship with, perhaps!--I’ve seen all that sort of thing in France and Italy often enough. D’Almayne very likely, he’s just the sort of puppy to lead a woman on--she laughs at him now, but it may be different when she’s only old Crane to contrast him with. By the way, I’ll give Arthur a hint on that score.” He rose, paced up and down the room several times, then continued--“I wonder what the deuce is the matter with me! I feel most absurdly and unpleasantly miserable.” He reseated himself by the window, tossed back his hair, and sat silently watching the moon, just then emerging from behind a bank of clouds. It was a time and scene to elevate and refine man’s nature; and Harry was not insensible to the influence. He thought of his boyhood, and his mother’s tender love; he recurred to the moonlight stroll in which he had confided these cherished memories to Alice, and the warm and ready sympathy with which she listened to the recital; then minute points in their subsequent intercourse forced themselves into his recollection--smiles, words, and glances, trifles in themselves, but when collected, suggestive of a definite idea; and lastly, her look when she quitted the dining-room that evening flashed across him, and with a sudden start he pressed his hand to his forehead as he resumed--“Fool that I am, I see it all now--now when it is too late I love her, and I might have won her love--it only required to tell her of my own feelings, to change the affectionate interest she has conceived for me into a warmer sentiment; and now, perhaps piqued by my apparent indifference, she has accepted this man, and sealed her own unhappiness--and mine too, for that matter; but I deserve it! Why did