incessant perils which had beset him since he entered upon his public career.
"I am a fool!" he said, "and worse than a fool, to set light by that which Heaven has so often preserved in the most marvellous manner. Something there yet remains for me in this world, were it only to bear my sorrows like a man, and to aid those who need my assistance. What have I seen,—what have I heard but the very conclusion of that which I knew was to happen? They"—(he durst not utter their names, even in soliloquy)—"they are embarrassed and in difficulties. She is stripped of her inheritance, and he seems rushing on some dangerous career, with which, but for the low voice in which he spoke, I might have become acquainted. Are there no means to aid or to warn them?"
As he pondered upon this topic, forcibly withdrawing his mind from his own disappointment, and compelling its attention to the affairs of Edith and her betrothed
