These sweet words made his heart beat violently, and brought the tears of tenderness into his eyes.  He kissed the words again and again.  He put them into his bosom, and took them out again, and gloated over them till they danced before his manly eyes.  Then his love took another turn:  he started up, and marched and strutted, like a young stag, about the room, with one hand pressing the paper to his bosom.  Why had he said Wednesday?  It could all have been got ready on Tuesday.  No matter, he would make up for that lost day.  He was on the road, once more, the road to fortune, and to her.

Cheetham came in, and found him walking excitedly, with the paper in his hand, and of course took the vulgar view of his emotion.

“Ay, lad,” said he, “and they are all swells, I promise you.  There’s Miss Laura Craske.  That’s the mayor’s daughter.  Lady Betty Tyrone.  She’s a visitor.  Miss Castleton!  Her father is the county member.”

“And who is this Mr. Coventry?” asked Henry.

“Oh, he is a landed gentleman, but spends his tin in Hillsborough; and you can’t blame him.  Mr. Coventry?  Why, that is Miss Carden’s intended.”

“Her intended!” gasped Henry.

“I mean her beau.  The gentleman she is going to marry, they say.”

Henry Little turned cold, and a tremor ran through him; but he did not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all outward sign of emotion.  He laid the paper down patiently, and went slowly away.

Loyal to his friend even in this bitter moment, he called at Bayne’s place and left word with the landlady that Mr. Bayne was not wanted at the works any more that day.

But he could not bear to talk to Bayne about his plans.  They had lost their relish.  He walked listlessly away, and thought it all over.

For the first time he saw his infatuation clearly.  Was ever folly like his?  If she had been a girl in humble life, would he not have asked whether she had a sweetheart?  Yet he must go and give his heart to a lady without inquiry.  There, where wisdom and prudence were most needed, he had speculated like an idiot.  He saw it, and said to himself, “I have acted like a boy playing at pitch-farthing, not like a man who knew the value of his heart.”

And so he passed a miserable time, bemoaning the treasure that was now quite inaccessible instead of nearly, and the treasure of his own heart he had thrown away.

He awoke with a sense of misery and deep depression, and could not eat; and that was a novelty in his young and healthy life.  He drank a cup of tea, however, and then went out, to avoid his mother’s tender looks of anxious inquiry.  He meant to tell her all one day; but to-day he was not strong enough.  He must wait till he was cured; for cured he must be, cured he would be.

He now tried to give his mind to the task Amboyne had set him; but it was too hard:  he gave it up, with rage and despair.