And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, Fauntleroy paced his gloomy chamber, and communed with himself as follows,—­or, at all events, it is the only solution which I can offer of the enigma presented in his character:—­“I am unchanged,—­the same man as of yore!” said he.  “True, my brother’s wealth—­he dying intestate—­is legally my own.  I know it; yet of my own choice, I live a beggar, and go meanly clad, and hide myself behind a forgotten ignominy.  Looks this like ostentation?  Ah! but in Zenobia I live again!  Beholding her, so beautiful,—­so fit to be adorned with all imaginable splendor of outward state,—­the cursed vanity, which, half a lifetime since, dropt off like tatters of once gaudy apparel from my debased and ruined person, is all renewed for her sake.  Were I to reappear, my shame would go with me from darkness into daylight.  Zenobia has the splendor, and not the shame.  Let the world admire her, and be dazzled by her, the brilliant child of my prosperity!  It is Fauntleroy that still shines through her!” But then, perhaps, another thought occurred to him.

“My poor Priscilla!  And am I just to her, in surrendering all to this beautiful Zenobia?  Priscilla!  I love her best,—­I love her only!—­but with shame, not pride.  So dim, so pallid, so shrinking,—­ the daughter of my long calamity!  Wealth were but a mockery in Priscilla’s hands.  What is its use, except to fling a golden radiance around those who grasp it?  Yet let Zenobia take heed!  Priscilla shall have no wrong!” But, while the man of show thus meditated,—­that very evening, so far as I can adjust the dates of these strange incidents,—­Priscilla poor, pallid flower!—­was either snatched from Zenobia’s hand, or flung wilfully away!

XXIII.  A VILLAGE HALL

Well, I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an exorcised spirit that had been driven from its old haunts after a mighty struggle.  It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond most other things, to find the impracticability of flinging aside affections that have grown irksome.  The bands that were silken once are apt to become iron fetters when we desire to shake them off.  Our souls, after all, are not our own.  We convey a property in them to those with whom we associate; but to what extent can never be known, until we feel the tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over ourselves.  Thus, in all the weeks of my absence, my thoughts continually reverted back, brooding over the bygone months, and bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to have left a trace of themselves in their passage.  I spent painful hours in recalling these trifles, and rendering them more misty and unsubstantial than at first by the quantity of speculative musing thus kneaded in with them.  Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla!  These three had absorbed my life into themselves.  Together with an inexpressible longing to know their fortunes, there was likewise a morbid resentment of my own pain, and a stubborn reluctance to come again within their sphere.