"You are right, Miss Brandon," he said, "the change of circumstances had taken place before; but all things have their consequences; and the results of those material alterations in fortune and station which had befallen me, were still to be made manifest to, and worked out by, myself. When first we met, you were very young--not sixteen, I think--and I was not old. Everything was in the spring-day with me. It was all full of promise. I had in those days two fortunes: worldly wealth, and even a greater store of happy hopes and expectations--the bright and luxuriant patrimony of inexperienced youth. From time to time we saw each other; till, when last we met, prosperity had been taken from me, the treasure of earthly riches was gone, and though not actually beggared, I and my poor father were in a state of absolute poverty. Still the other fortune, that rich estate of youthful hope and inexperienced expectation, though somewhat diminished, was not altogether gone. I fancied that, in the eyes of the noble and the good, wealth would make no difference. I had never found it make any difference to me in my estimation of others. I imagined that those qualities which some had esteemed and liked in me, would still at least retain my friends. I never for an instant dreamed that it could or ought to have an influence on the adamant of love. I had almost said and done rash things in those days; but you went away out of London, and I soon began to perceive that I had bitterly deceived myself." "You never perceived any difference in me," cried Eda, her voice trembling with emotions which carried away all discretion. "You do not mean to say, Mr. Dudley, that you saw, or that you thought you saw, such base weakness in my nature as would render of the slightest value in my eyes a change of fortune in those I--I----" And extending her left hand, as if to cast the idea from her, she turned away, and shook her head sorrowfully, with her eyes full of tears. "No, no, Miss Brandon!" answered Dudley; "no, no, Eda! I said not so. It was the world taught me the world's views. Nay, more, I laid the blame of misunderstanding those views upon myself, not others. I saw some reason even in those views which debarred me from happiness; I felt the due value of station and fortune when I had lost them, which I never felt while they were my own. But listen to me still with patience for one moment. Expectation was not yet fully tamed. I said to myself, I will make myself a station, I will regain the fortune which has been lost; and then, perhaps, love may re-illumine the torch of hope at its own flame, and all be light once more." "Love!" murmured Eda, in a low tone, as he paused for an instant; but Dudley went on:--