Yes, it was all over for him! Nothing mattered much now! Copy out anecdotes from the family chronicles, hunt up antiquities and statistics for those speeches with which Lord Hetherington intended to astonish the world in the forthcoming session, settle down as librarian and secretary for as long as this noble family would have him, and when they kicked him out, live by literary hack work until he found another noble family ready to receive him in the old capacity for a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Why not? He smiled grimly to himself as he thought of the Berlin proposition, and how astonished old Byrne would be when he wrote to decline it--for he should decline it at once. He had thought about it so often and so much, he had allowed his imagination to feast him with such pictures of himself established there with Marian by his side, that he felt utterly unable to face the dark blank reality, heartbroken and alone. Besides, what motive had he for work now? Experience had taught him that he could always find sufficient press-work in London to keep body and soul together, and what more did he want! What more did---- Was it all real, or was he dreaming? Marian! was it all over between him and her? was she no longer his Marian? was he never to see her, to touch her hand, to hold her in his arms, to live in the light of those loving eyes again? He thought of their last conversation and their parting, he thought of his last letter to her, so full of hope and love; so tender of the past, so full of the future; and there, to that, was the reply lying before him announcing her marriage. Her marriage?--her sale! She had bartered herself away for fine houses, horses, carriages, dresses; she, daughter of James Ashurst, who had loved her as the apple of his eye, and would as soon have thought of her renouncing her religion as of her breaking her plighted word.