"She was an heiress, and her money had cleared my father's estate from heavy encumbrances, and no doubt he remembered this when providing for her future. He was her senior by five and twenty years, and foresaw a long widowhood for her. "The entail ended in his own person, so he was free to dispose of his property as he liked. He left my mother tenant for life; and he left me five hundred a year, chargeable upon the estate, which income was only to begin when I came of age. Till my one-and-twentieth birthday I was dependent upon my mother for everything. "I told myself that I had to cut my own path in life, and that I must be the architect of my own fortune. "My mother's income, under her marriage settlement, was considerable, and this, in addition to a rent-roll of between two and three thousand a year, made her a rich woman. "Assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage, since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable time upon my mother's liberality. I had made up my mind to go to the Bar, and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that branch of the legal profession; but far nearer than mere questions of interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me. My mother had given me the devotion of years, had made me the chief object of her thoughts and her hopes, and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I were to disappoint her. I knew, alas! that upon this very question of marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego, and that there was a certain Lady Emily whom I was intended to marry, the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate friend, and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our neighbours. "Knowing this, and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to the best of mothers, I could but echo Martha's solemn words-- "'It would never do.' "No, 'it would never do.' The seraphic voice, the spiritual countenance, the appealing helplessness, which had so moved my pity, must be to me as a dream from which I had awakened. Esperanza's fate must rest henceforward with herself, aided by honest Martha Blake, and helped, through Martha, from my purse. I must never see her again. No word had been spoken, no hint had been given of the love which it was my bounden duty to conquer and forget. I could contemplate the inevitable renunciation with a clear conscience. "I worked harder in that term than I had worked yet, and shut my door against all the allurements of undergraduate friends and all the pleasures of university life. I was voted churlish and a muff; but I found my books the best cure for an unhappy love; and though the image of Miss Campbell was oftener with me than the learned shade of Newton or the later ghost of Whewell, I contrived to do some really good work.