Sidney Hinchford escorted Harriet Wesden home to Camberwell. A most unromantic walk down the Newington Causeway—sacred to milliners and counter-skippers—the Walworth Road, Camberwell Road, and streets branching thence to melancholy suburbs—and yet a walk that was the happiest in the lives of these two, though looked back upon in after years through tear-dimmed eyes, and sighed for by hearts that had been sorely wrung. Such a walk as most of us may have taken once in life—seldom more than once—a walk away from sober realism into fairy-land, where everything apart from love was a something to be utterly despised, and where love first rose to fill our souls with promise. What if the story ended abruptly, and the waking came, and one or two of us fell heavily to earth—we did not die of the wounds, and we see now that the fall was the best thing that could have happened for us. We look back at the past, and regret not the sunshine that dazzled us there.

And yet there was a stern story to relate, and Sidney had escorted Harriet Wesden home, believing in the darkness rather than the light upon his way. He went forth regarding life literally, and he found himself, after awhile, in the land of romance, wherein sober existence had no dwelling-place.

Let him tell the story in his own way.

Harriet and Sidney had not proceeded a long distance together before he began.

"I think that I must have puzzled you very much, Harriet, by this evening's behaviour—by the way in which I received your kindness—more than kindness. There was a reason, and I am going to explain it."

"Is it worth explanation?" asked Harriet.

"I think so—you shall judge. It is an explanation that I cannot give my father, for it would break his heart, I think, with the long suspense which would follow it."

"So serious an explanation as that, Sidney?"

"Yes. Is it not odd that, with my character for straightforwardness, I should have been all my life keeping back the truth?"

"From him—for his sake, only, Sidney?"

"Perhaps for my own—to save myself from a host of inquisitive questions, and an attention that would irritate rather than soothe—I am a very selfish man."

"I don't believe that yet awhile."

"When I came home to-night, I had no other hope than that you and your father would consider that I had not made good my claim to become a favoured suitor, and that there was nothing left me but to make my statement and withdraw my rash pretensions. You will pardon me, Harriet, but it had never struck me that you were strong enough, or—pardon me again—that you had ever loved me well enough to attempt a sacrifice.

"I was a girl—very vain and frivolous—you were right."

"I come back and find you altered very much, Harriet. I find the old reserve that piqued my pride no longer there, and, instead, a something newer and more frank, a something that says, 'Trust me.' Is that a true reading?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"I am vain enough to believe in the heart growing fonder during my absence—though I have always fancied the experiment full of danger for the absent one. Say that the heart has done so—or that I did not understand you. Still the effect was the same, or I should not have the courage to tell you the great secret of my life. If I believed that you did not love me, or that you had ever loved any one else, I would not venture to put you to this test."

Harriet hung down her head, and her heart beat rapidly; the old story was before her, and his very words seemed now to forbid its revelation. His firm, self-reliant nature had never swerved from her, and he judged others by himself. His was a love that had begun from boyhood, and grown with his growth; should she raise the first suspicion against her by telling him all, when it was in her power—and only in her power—to make him happy, to make amends for all by her new love for him? Let him test her how he liked now, she was a woman who looked at life seriously, and the follies of her youth were over!

They walked on silently for awhile; they went on together, playing their love-dream out, and oblivious of the matter-of-fact world hustling them in their progress.

"This is the love test—and it must be a strange, pure love to exist after I have told all," he said.

"Do you doubt me, Sidney, already?"

"I cannot tell. I cannot," he added, more passionately, "believe in any affection strong and deep enough to last; but I can forgive, and consider natural, any love that turns to pity at the truth. Do you comprehend me?"

"Scarcely."

"Well then—I am going blind!"

An awful and unexpected revelation, which took her breath away, and seemed for an instant to stop her heart beating.

"Oh! Sidney—my poor Sidney—it cannot be!"

"Sooner or later, Harriet, it must be; mine is a hopeless case," he answered; "with care, and less night work, and quiet—that last means absence from all mental excitement—I may go on for a few years more; the last physician whom I have consulted even thinks he can give me ten years' grace. Now in ten years, ten of the best years of a young man's life, I ought to save, and I hope to save, sufficient to live upon. I may be over-sanguine, but if I get a good foothold I will try. And now where lives the girl who will accept a ten years' engagement, with the chance of a beggar or a blind man at the end of it?"

Harriet pressed his arm.

"Here," she answered.

"You will! There is the faith to wait, the courage to endure, and the love to sustain me. You are not afraid?"

"No—I have no fear," replied Harriet, warmly; "God knows that I have changed very much, and only lately learned to understand myself. I do not fear, Sidney, for I—I have learned to love you, and, by comparison, to see how noble and high-principled you are. But oh! if I were but more worthy of you, and your deep love for me!"

"Worthy!" he echoed; "why, what have I done to deserve a life's devotion to me, save to love you, which was the most natural thing in the world. What have I ever done to deserve the happiness of winning your love—a long legged, near-sighted gawky like me!—and such a love as shrinks not from the dark prospect ahead, but will disperse it by its brightness, and keep me from despairing. Why, in ten years time we shall not be an old couple—I shall only be one-and-thirty, and you but nine-and-twenty. When the light goes out," he added solemnly, "you will place your hand in mine to make amends for it, and begin my new happiness by the wife's companionship; shall I be so very much to be pitied then, I wonder?"

"I hope not, Sid."

She had not called him by that name since he was a boy, and his heart thrilled at it, and took fresh hope from it.

"All this on my part, I know is very selfish," he said. "I have told you already that I am a selfish man, to wish that your youth and beauty and love should be sacrificed to my affliction. I did not think of gaining them; I was content to pass away from you, and see you allied to one more deserving, more fitting, than myself; even now, I will go away resigned, thinking you are right to give me up, if but one doubt linger at your heart."

"Not one," was the firm answer.

"I can bear all now—afterwards, a doubt would strike me down—remember that."

"Trust in me, Sid—ever."

"I will."

The hand that had rested on his arm was held in his now, and they walked on together, with their hearts as full of happiness as though blindness were a trifling calamity, scarcely worth considering under the circumstances.

Sidney had pictured so dark a prospect ahead, that this sudden change made all bright, and Harriet Wesden was happy in being able to prove that her love was unselfish and strong. She did not believe that she had ever loved any one else then—she knew that hers was a different and more intense affection, something that felt like love, and that nothing in the world could destroy. Mr. Darcy was but a phantom, far back in the mists—his own dark efforts had utterly extinguished every ray of romance, in the false light of which he had luridly shone. Strengthened by her new love, she could have broken her promise to Mattie, and told all then, trusting in him to see the truth, and believe in her henceforth; but he had spoken of the danger of excitement to him, and once again—once for all—went the story back, never to hover on the brink of discovery again!

It was a strange courtship—that of Sidney Hinchford and Harriet's—but they were happy. The calamity was in the distance, and their hearts were young and strong. Both had faith then—and of the chances and changes of life, it was not natural to dwell upon, after the one avowal had been uttered.

"Then it is an engagement," he had asked hoarsely, and she had answered "Yes," with his own frankness and boldness; and thus the path ahead seemed bright enough.

Outside the suburban retreat of the Wesdens', Sidney Hinchford had a little struggle with duty and inclination—conquering inclination with that strong will of his.

"I'll go back to the old gentleman," he said at last; "he is scarcely used to my reappearance yet, and a little makes him nervous. Good-bye, love."

A lovers parting at the iron gate, to the intense edification of the potman coming up the street with the nine o'clock beer; and then Sidney tore himself homewards, thinking what a happy fellow he was, and how the business disappointments of life had been softened by the events that had followed them. The future could not be dark with Harriet; before this he had become resigned to his calamity, bent his strong mind to regard it as inevitable; now there was to come happiness with it, and he would be more than content, he thought.

He was soon back in Suffolk Street. Mr. Wesden was in the shop talking to a short, thin man with a sallow complexion, a hooked nose, bright black eyes, and straight hair; a man dressed in black; with a rusty satin stock of the same colour, secured by an old-fashioned brooch of gold wire, in the shape of a heart.

"And her name was Mattie, you say?"

"That was the name she called herself, and went always by in this house."

"And you don't know her whereabouts?"

"I haven't an idea."

"But you think she has gone wrong, don't you?" the man asked with no small eagerness.

"Well, I hope not; but I think so."

"Who? Mattie!" cried Sidney, suddenly thrusting himself into the conversation; "our Mattie—that be—hanged!"

He checked himself in time to save scandalizing the ears of the gentleman in black, who twirled round with a tee-to-tum velocity and faced him.

"What do you know of her, young man?" he asked abruptly.

"What do you want to know for?" was the rejoinder.

"I wish to find her—I am very anxious to find her."

"I hope you may, if it's for her good."

"Her moral and spiritual good, sir—without a doubt."

"You can't improve her. There isn't a better or more unselfish girl in the world!"

"What!" screamed the man in black.

"Not a better girl, I verily believe. I haven't heard the reasons for her departure yet," he said, looking at Mr. Wesden; "but they're good ones, or I was never more mistaken in my life."

"You are mistaken," said Mr. Wesden; "I've tried to think the best of Mattie, but I can't. There are no honest reasons for her conduct, or she would have told me."

Sidney Hinchford paused,

"It must be very unreasonable conduct then," said Sidney, "and she must have changed very much during my absence from this house. But, upon my soul!" he exclaimed vehemently, "I shan't believe any harm in her, for one!"

The stranger regarded Sidney Hinchford attentively, then said—

"You need not have brought your soul into question, sir. Pledge that in God's service—nothing else."

"Oh!" said Sidney, taken aback at the reproof.

"You speak warmly; and somehow I've a hope of her not being very bad—of reclaiming her by my own earnest efforts. Young man, I will thank you."

He stretched forth an ungloved hand, which Sidney took—a hard hand, that gripped Sid forcibly and made him wince a little.

"You all seem in doubt, more or less," he said; "and that gives me hope. Mr. Wesden and you don't agree in opinion, and that's something. Who's that white-haired man I see in the parlour!"

"That's my father, sir," said Sidney, smiling at the sudden curiosity evinced.

"Does he know anything about her?"

"Not so much as myself," said Mr. Wesden.

"Have you asked the servant—if you keep one?"

"I have asked her everything, and she knows nothing," replied the stationer.

"Then I'll go. I think I shall find her yet, mind you," he said in an excited manner. "I'm not a man to give up in a hurry, when I've taken an idea in my head. I've been sixteen years looking for that girl!"

"Are you a relation?" asked Sidney.

"Her father."

"Indeed!"

The stranger began hammering the counter with his hard hand, till the money in the till underneath rattled again. He began to take small leaps in the air, also, during the progress of his harangue.

"Her father—a poor man reclaimed from error, and knowing what it is to walk uprightly. A man who has, he trusts, done some good in his day—a man who now sets himself the task of finding that daughter he neglected once. And I'll find her and reclaim her—God will show me the way, I think. And you shall see her again, a shining light in the midst of ye—a brand from the burning, a credit to me! There's hope for her yet. Good night."

And very abruptly the gentleman in black leaped out of the shop and disappeared.

"That's an odd fish," remarked Sidney.