They would, perhaps, have expressed themselves in a more discontented manner, if they had known the intention with which Randolph sought the home of his fathers: he has himself obscurely intimated it, in his soliloquy by the sea. To persuade his sister to remain in those old halls, under the guardianship of Polydore Riches; to return himself to London, to obtain, in spite of all obstacles, an interview with Mildred Pendarrel; to extract from her the confession which he was convinced she was ready to make; to exchange mutual vows; to look round the world for the path which he might cut to honour and fortune; to return and claim his bride, who by that time would be her own mistress--such was the scheme upon which he was at present resolved. It was a wild outline, and he did not trouble himself to fill up the details. Young and ardent, he looked straight to the summit of his ambition, and recked nothing of the ravines which separated the various intervening ridges. But with all his determination he hesitated to disclose his idea to Helen. He felt that to her he was everything. Until quite recently they had always shared one another's thoughts. He trembled at the anguish he should inflict by such a separation. And so he deferred the confidence from time to time, persuading himself that it would best be made on the very eve of his departure, until this was indefinitely postponed by intelligence that Pendarrel Hall was being prepared for the immediate reception of its mistress. In the meanwhile his sister and he renewed their former acquaintance with the good folks of the hamlet, and to external appearance resumed the way in which they had lived before the late Mr. Trevethlan's death. It was a quiet, dreamy sort of life, of which a faint sketch was given in the outset of this narrative. They were born in a land of romance; the whole region was classic ground. From King Arthur's castle of Tintagel in the north-east, to Merlin's stone in Mount's Bay, respecting which an old prophecy-- "There shall land on the stone Merlyn Those shall burn Paul's, Penzance, and Newlyn,"