With Algernon Grey the effort was vain; he felt depressed, and he struggled against the depression; but the enemy conquered, and, foot by foot, gained ground upon him. First, he gave way so far as to think of Agnes Herbert, to dwell upon the recollection of her beauty and her excellence. Then he strove to cast his eyes forward into the future, and to think only of the coming events; but what a sad contrast did they present to the images just banished! war, and strife, and the fiery turbulence of ambition, and the low, mean intrigues of courts, and cold pageantry, and idle revelling; in place of beauty, and love, and hope, and sweet domestic peace! It was too painful to rest upon; and his mind turned to her he loved again; but the same bright visions, in which he had indulged for a moment, would not now come back at his bidding. He thought of Agnes, it is true; but at the same time he remembered that he was leaving her for ever; that he was voluntarily casting away the early joy of first love, the only refuge in which his heart could now find peace, the sweetest light that had ever dawned upon existence, all that imagination could have pictured of happiness and contentment. And deep, deep, to his very heart, he felt the sacrifice; and his spirit writhed in the torture which he inflicted on himself. "Should he really never see her more?" he asked himself; "or should he see her again, but as the wife of another?" There was agony and despair in the very thought; and yet, what could he do? how could he act to prevent it? how could he shut out that terrible but too certain conviction? It was impossible to change his hard fate. It was impossible even to dream that it would be changed; and in the end he gave himself up to dull and heavy despondency. His feelings had been grave and sad even when he came to Heidelberg. He had believed that he was destined to go through life unloving and unbeloved, linked to one whose reported conduct was, to say the least, light, whom he only remembered as a proud haughty child; whom he only knew by the evil rumours which had reached him. But since that time a light had arisen on the darkness of such feelings, to go out as suddenly as it had been kindled, and leave the night tenfold more gloomy than before. He had learned to love, but without hope; and what state can be more terrible to a young and passionate heart? On such things he pondered as they rode along; and they soon absorbed his whole attention. He marked not with any degree of accuracy the road they took; he hardly saw the houses, or the trees, or the mountains as they passed. He marked not the fleeting hours, or the changes of the light and sky. But there were others in the train whose eyes were more busily employed; and amongst them were those of his own servants, who, with less to occupy their thoughts, felt, or seemed to feel, the fatigues of the way and the oppression of the sultry atmosphere far more than their lord.