The eye of love, however, looked on those slight signs in a very different light.  Did she, could she love one so unworthy?  The very idea seemed to make him feel as a new and better man.  He covered his eyes with his hands, lest any outward sign should break that blessed illusion, and then he started, and returning recollection brought with it momentary despair.  Did she even love him—­were even her parents to consent,—­his own,—­for his vivid and excited fancy for one minute imagined what in more sober moments he knew was impossible—­yet even were such difficulties removed, would he, could he take that fair and fragile creature from a home of luxury and every comfort to poverty?  What had he to support a wife?  How could they live, and what hope had he of increasing in any way his fortune?  Was he not exciting her affections to reduce them, like his own, to despair?  And could she, beautiful and delicate as she was, could she bear the deprivation of his lot?  She would never marry without the consent of her parents, and their approval would never be his, and even if it were, he had nothing, not the slightest hope of gaining anything wherewith to support her; and she, if indeed she loved him, he should see her droop and sink before his eyes, and that he could not bear; his own misery might be endured, but not hers.  No!  He paced the small apartment with reckless and disordered steps.  His own doom was fixed, nothing could now prevent it—­but hers, it might not be too late.  He would withdraw from her sight, he would leave her presence, and for ever; break the spell that bound him near her.  Ere that hasty walk in his narrow room was completed, his resolution was fixed; he would resign his curacy, and depart from the dangerous fascinations hovering round him.

Yet still he lingered.  If he had been too presumptuous in thinking thus of Emmeline—­if he were indeed nothing to her, why should he inflict this anguish on himself?  Why need he tear himself from her?  The night of Edward’s return, while in one sense it caused him misery, by the random remark of Lord Louis, yet, by the agitation of Emmeline, the pang was softened, though he was strengthened in his resolve.  Four days afterwards, the very evening of that day when Mr. Howard had alluded to his neglect of duties, before Herbert and his cousins, he tendered his resignation, coldly and proudly refusing any explanation, or assigning any reason for so doing, except that he wished to obtain a situation as tutor in any nobleman or gentleman’s family about to travel.  So greatly had the mind of Mr. Howard been prejudiced against the unhappy young man, by the false representations of his parishioners, that he rather rejoiced at Myrvin’s determination, having more than once feared, if his conduct did not alter, he should be himself compelled to dismiss him from his curacy.  But while pleased at being spared a task so adverse to his benevolent nature, he yet could not refrain from regarding this strange and apparently sudden resolution as a tacit avowal of many of those errors with which he was charged.