Now, all of a sudden he hears from the lips of her own mother, wrung from them, as it were unawares, under the dread pre-occupation of impending danger, that another man's suit is entertained or courted, and so utterly trivial are any pretensions of his held to be, that their very existence is overlooked, and himself made the confidant of the mother's views. Oh, how can he resign himself? How pluck away the image around which all his hopes and dreams, the very roots and tendrils of his being have entwined themselves for so many years? Pluck out an eye? It were to pluck out his very heart, and cast it from him--to cease to think--to cease to live. Yet if she were to become another man's wife he would have to do it. He groaned. The universe seemed falling in on him, his head swam, and he fell into a dose. When he next awoke the emotional strain was somewhat relaxed. His thoughts would run in no other channel, but he began now to muse, and plan, and question. Was it indeed decided? Or was it as yet but a plan of the mother? Had Sophia consented? And even if she had, was it of her own free will, and with the concurrence of her affections? Or was it a mere compliance with the wishes of her parents, while she had no sufficient reason to admit a preference elsewhere? For the unmaidenliness, as he would have called it, of loving unsought, was not to be dreamed of in the case of Sophia. 'Ah!' he cried aloud, 'Who knows? I have never spoken, or----' the rest would not frame itself in words, but a vision arose before his mind's eye, or rather many visions, remembrances of all the sweetest and most endearing looks, or what he regarded as such, that she had ever given him; and as he thought, his poor chilled soul grew warmer and more at ease, and the throbbing in his head grew easier. 'The venture is worth making,' he said presently. And thereupon he rose from bed and sat down before his desk, which, as already mentioned, was in another part of the same room. Mary was not present at the moment, so there was no one to offer opposition. He drew to him some paper and prepared to write. His mind had been seething with emotion, but as he took the pen in his hand, the thoughts grew hazy, and refused to shape themselves in words,---they refused to be written down. Fluttering and whirling before him like the disordered gleams in a moving prism, they would not be caught, and yet kept tantalizing him by settling upon his pen, till he tried to write them, when they would dissipate again in a new and perturbed whirl of tempestuous feeling. He clasped his hands upon his aching brow, but it ached worse than ever, and he sat stupified in blank despair.