These circumstances gathering together round the mind of our young friend perplexed and pained him. It is very true that he was perfectly well acquainted with all the commonplaces of consolation, and he knew that there not unfrequently arises good out of evil. But what does knowledge amount to in the way of consolation? He saw no particular good end likely to be answered by all these perplexities; but he saw, or thought he saw, a great evil as the probable result of them. He had left London without giving notice to any of his friends; and the business on which he visited the country was not one which he was very desirous of advertising. He therefore very naturally thought that Clara would suppose that he was not very anxious to renew the acquaintance with her; and he also contemplated the possibility of some more rational being than Tippetson making advances more acceptably and successfully. This thought was a source of uneasiness to him, and he could not see any mode of communicating to Mr. Martindale the cause of his sudden absence from town. He had thought that a day or two would suffice, and that in that short time he should not be missed; but now he found that he was likely to be detained much longer; and should he on his return to London state that his father’s illness had delayed him in the country beyond his intention, there would still be something remarkable in the fact of his hasty and silent departure from town. He therefore thought that this illness was most peculiarly unfortunate and calamitous, as not only being distressing to his parents, but probably productive of serious inconvenience to himself. We have already intimated that Horatio Markham was deficient in some of those qualities that form a hero. Here we have occasion to repeat the observation. His want of heroism was manifested in several points alluded to in the present chapter. For had he been a proper hero, he would never have suffered Mr. Wiggins to grant any thing of indulgence to the embarrassed shopkeeper, but he would forthwith have paid to the utmost every farthing of the debt to him and the other creditors, had he been under the necessity for that purpose of parting with his library and every saleable article in his possession, even to his very watch. Had he been a proper hero, he would have regarded with more apathy and magnanimity a commercial failure. Had he been a proper hero, he would not have admitted the possibility that there could exist on the face of the earth any human being but himself worthy of Clara’s hand, or likely to obtain it. Had he been a proper hero, he would not have been quite so shy, as he clearly was, of the fact that his father kept a linen-draper’s shop in a country town.