Durant had not been at Oakley for more than a year. No invitation had come to him, though he still corresponded with Lady Curtis on the same confidential and affectionate terms as before; and his heart had grown sick with this pause of stagnation in his life. There are moments when that which we have borne with tolerable calm for years, becomes all at once intolerable to us; and this is especially the case with men who, having laboured hard and dutifully without much personal recompense, are suddenly moved by some accidental prick to see that their best years are floating away from them, without any of the delights that belong to that crown of existence. Why this feeling should have come upon Durant after his late visit to Underhayes, and not on previous visits, when he had seen his friend Arthur, so much younger than himself, enjoying the happiness which it was not given to him to enjoy, it would be difficult to tell. Perhaps Arthur’s happiness, while it lasted, was too full of drawbacks to attract his friend, to whom it never could have been possible to woo his love in Mrs. Bates’ parlour, behind the backs of the family. But curiously enough, when the family was swept away, and all its shabbiness had become pathetic; and when Arthur’s happiness had fallen into dust, and become apparently a thing beyond restoration or even hope, then, and only then, did it stimulate the dormant passion in Durant’s veins. He said to himself that to lose the chance of happiness altogether by thus passively waiting till it should drop upon him from the clouds, was, perhaps, in the end a greater foolishness than even the mad folly which had ruined Arthur. Arthur, at all events, at the worst, had had his chance; whereas Lewis, so far as appearances went, was never to have his chance, but only toil and toil on for the benefit of others till the capacity for joy was exhausted in him. In the grey autumnal weather, when the rains are falling, and the skies lowering, and all things settling down to “the dead of the year,” does not sometimes a longing, insupportable, for sunshine and brightness, cross us--a longing which has to be satisfied by some lighting up of lamps and artificial processes of illumination, if not by the natural and blessed sun? Durant went on for a little, with his heart full of smouldering fire, reflecting upon his own loneliness amidst all the enjoyments and fellowships of the world, reflecting upon the manner in which his own hard earnings melted away, running into the bottomless pit of improvidence and unlovely waste in his father’s house, with no real benefit even to the dwellers therein, much less to him whose labours had no lightening, whatever happened. At last the point of explosion was reached by the touch of a piece of good fortune. For the first time he was retained as first counsel in an important case likely to attract some notice in the world, and at the same time was appointed one of a