professor's treatment, and the exulting hopes of his unconscious
friend, he had sworn to himself, that the first involuntary token of
regard from the young lady towards one or the other, should decide
him whether to win name and position for her sake, or to carry his
slighted passion to the utmost parts of the earth, and never again
see her face.

'Ethel,' he said, stopping short, 'never threaten Providence--above
all, never keep the threat.'

Ethel scarcely durst speak, in her anxiety to know what cast the die,
though with all Dr. Spencer's charms, she could not but pity the
delusion that could have made him hope to be preferred to her father
--above all, by her mother. Nor could she clearly understand from him
what had dispelled his hopes. Something it was that took place at
the picnic on Arthur's Seat, of which she had previously heard as a
period of untold bliss. That something, still left in vague mystery,
had sealed the fate of the two friends.

'And so,' said Dr. Spencer, 'I took the first foreign appointment
that offered. And my poor father, who had spent his utmost on me,
and had been disappointed in all his sons, was most of all
disappointed in me. I held myself bound to abide by my rash vow;
loathed tame English life without her, and I left him to neglect in
his age.'

'You could not have known or expected!' exclaimed Ethel.

'What right had I to expect anything else? It was only myself that I
thought of. I pacified him by talk of travelling, and extending my