arm to shelter her, in want of some one to take care of her, and he could not tolerate the idea that anyone but himself should give her the succour she needed; but how was he to do it? The question seemed to get into the air and whisper round him--how was he to do it? He had nothing, or what to such a man was nothing, and worse than nothing. He managed to live no one could tell how. True, in living he did not know how Rollo managed to spend a good deal of money--more than many a family is reared upon; but there is proportion in everything, and he never could tell from one year’s end to another how he had got through. And he had asked a girl to marry him! He groaned within himself when he came back to this centre thought, this pivot of all his reflections, though it was sweet. He had asked her to marry him; he had pledged himself to take her away out of her troubles, to throw open a refuge to her, to make her escape practicable: speedily, certainly, easily, so far as she knew--and how was he to do it? If the question went through his mind once, it flew and circled in wavering rounds about him, like a moth or a bat in summer, a hundred times at least as he went from the Chevalier’s lodge to the Deanery door. He had no time for thinking, since the hour of dinner approached, and the Dean waited for no one; but he thought and thought all the same. What was he to do? He marry! how was he to do it? Yet it must be done. He did nothing but ask himself this while he brushed his hair and tied his evening tie. He had nothing, not a penny--he had a valet and a dressing-case, with gold tops to all the bottles, and the most expensive clothes from the dearest tailor--but he had nothing, and everybody knew that he had nothing. The situation was appalling. A cold dew came out on his forehead; he to do such a thing! but yet he had done it--he had committed himself--and now the question that remained was--not how to get out of it, which under any other circumstances would have been his clear duty, but how to do it? This was the problem he tried to solve while he was dressing, which flitted about his head while he sat at dinner, between every mouthful of his soup, and fluttered all through the dessert. How was he to do it? And when the evening was over--when Lady Caroline had gone to bed, and the Dean to his study, Rollo at length ventured out into the Deanery garden with his cigar, in spite of the black looks of Mr. Jeremie, who wanted to shut up the house and get to bed himself at a reasonable hour, as a dean’s butler has a right to do.