Robert Lyon continued speaking, distinctly and yet in an undertone, that though Ascott was walking a few yards off, Hilary felt was meant for her alone to hear. "The change is, you perceive, from the life of a student to that of a man of business. I do not deny that I preferred the first. Once upon a time to be a fellow in a college, or a professor, or the like, was my utmost aim and I would have half killed myself to attain it. Now, I think differently." He paused, but did not seem to require an answer, and it did not come. "I want, not to be rich but to get a decent competence, and to get it as soon as I can. I want not to ruin my health with incessant study. I have already injured it a good deal." "Have you been ill? You never said so." "Oh no, it was hardly worth while. And I knew an active life would soon set me right again. No fear! there's life in the old dog yet. He does not wish to die. But," Mr. Lyon pursued, "I have had a 'sair fecht' the last year or two. I would not go through it again, nor see any one dear to me go through it. It is over, but it has left its scars. Strange! I have been poor all my life, yet I never till now felt an actual terror of poverty." Hilary shrank within herself; less even at the words than at something in their tone--something hard, nay fierce; something at once despairing and aggressive. "It is strange," she said; "such a terror is not like you. I feel none; I can not even understand it." "No, I knew you could not," he muttered; and was silent. So was Hilary. A vague trouble came over her. Could it be that he, Robert Lyon, had been seized with the _auri sacra fames_, which he had so often inveighed against and despised? that his long battle with poverty had caused in him such an overweening desire for riches that, to obtain them, he would sacrifice every thing else, exile himself to a far country for years, selling his very life and soul for gold? Such a thought of him was so terrible--that is, would have been were it tenable--that Hilary for an instant felt herself shiver all over. The next she spoke out--in justice to him she forced herself to speak out--all her honest soul. "I do believe that this going abroad to make a fortune, which young men so delight in, is often a most fatal mistake. They give up far more than they gain--country, home, health. I think a man has no right to sell his life any more than his soul for so many thousands a year." Robert Lyon smiled--"No, and I am not selling mine. With my temperate habits I have as good a chance of health at Bombay as in London--perhaps better. And the years I must be absent I would have been absent almost as much from you--I mean they would have been spent in work as engrossing and as hard. They will soon pass, and then I shall come home rich--rich. Do you think I am growing mercenary?" "No." "Tell me what you do think about me?" "I--can not quite understand."