He was a muscular young fellow of twenty-six, with a handsome face, and, when he chose, a kindly charming manner.  He had been—­and he was fully aware of this—­as idle and as worthless as any young fellow could possibly be; he was even aware that the worst Mount Hope said of him was much better than he deserved.  In those hours that were such a new experience to him, when he denied himself other companionship than his own accusing conscience; when the contemplation of the naked shape of his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while under his breath he cursed the weakness that had made him what he was.

With his hair in disorder on his handsome shapely head, he would sit thus hours together, not wholly insensible to a certain grim sense of humor, since in all his schemes of life he had made no provision for the very thing that had happened.  He wondered mightily what a fellow could do with his last thousand dollars, especially when a fellow chanced to be in love and meditated nothing less than marriage; for North’s day-dream, coming like the sun through a rift in the clouds to light up the somberness of his solitary musings, was all of love and Elizabeth Herbert.  He wondered what she had heard of him—­little that was good, he told himself, and probably much that was to his discredit.  Yet as he sat there he was slowly shaping plans for the future.  One point was clear:  he must leave Mount Hope, where he had run his course, where he was involved and committed in ways he could not bear to think of.  To go meant that he would be forsaking much that was evil; a situation from which he could not extricate himself otherwise.  It also meant that he would be leaving Elizabeth Herbert; but perhaps she had not even guessed his secret, for he had not spoken of love; or perhaps having divined it, she cared nothing for him.  Even so, his regeneration seemed in itself a thing worth while.  What he was to do, how make a place for himself, he had scarcely considered; but his inheritance was wasted, and of the comfortable thousands that had come to him, next to nothing remained.

In the intervals between his musings Mr. North got together such of his personal belongings as he deemed worth the removal; he was surprised to find how few were the things he really valued.  On the grounds of a chastened taste in such matters he threw aside most of his clothes; he told himself that he did not care to be judged by such mere externals as the shade of a tie or the color of a pair of hose.  Under his hands—­for the spirit of reform was strong upon him—­his rooms took on a sober appearance.  He amused himself by making sundry penitential offerings to the flames; numerous evidences of his unrighteous bachelorhood disappearing from walls and book-shelves.  Coincident with this he owned to a feeling of intense satisfaction.  What remained he would have his friend Marshall Langham sell after he was gone, his finances having suddenly become of paramount importance.