“I SHOULD have been contented amid so much beauty, and with even more than my share of earthly blessings.”  Thus Mr. Markland communed with himself, walking about alone, near the close of the day preceding that on which his appointed journey was to begin.  “Am I not acting over again that old folly of the substance and shadow?  Verily, I believe it is so.  Ah! will we ever be satisfied with any achievement in this life?  To-morrow I leave all by which I am here surrounded, and more, a thousand-fold more—­my heart’s beloved ones; and for what?  To seek the fortune I was mad enough to cast from me into a great whirlpool, believing that it would be thrown up at my feet again, with every disk of gold changed into a sparkling diamond.  I have waited eagerly on the shore for the returning tide, but yet there is no reflux, and now my last hope rests on the diver’s strength and doubtful fortune.  I must make the fearful plunge.”

A cold shudder ran through the frame of Mr. Markland, as he realized, too distinctly, the image he had conjured up.  A feeling of weakness and irresolution succeeded.

“Ah!” he murmured to himself, “if all had not been so blindly cast upon this venture, I might be willing to wait the issue, providing for the worst by a new disposition of affairs, and by new efforts here.  But I was too eager, too hopeful, too insanely confident.  Every thing is now beyond my reach.”

This was the state of his mind when Mr. Allison, whom he had not met in a familiar manner for several weeks, joined him, saying, as he came up with extended hand, and fine face, bright with the generous interest in others that always burned in his heart—­

“What is this I hear, Mr. Markland?  Is it true that you are going away, to be absent for some months?  Mr. Willet was telling me about it this morning.”

“It is too true,” replied Mr. Markland, assuming a cheerful air, yet betraying much of the troubled feeling that oppressed him.  “The calls of business cannot always be disregarded.”

“No—­but, if I understand aright, you contemplate going a long distance South—­somewhere into Central America.”

“Such is my destination.  Having been induced to invest money in a promising enterprise in that far-off region, it is no more than right to look after my interests there.”

“With so much to hold your thoughts and interests here,” said Mr. Allison, “I can hardly understand why you should let them wander off so far from home.”

“And I can hardly understand it myself,” returned Mr. Markland, in a lower tone of voice, as if the admission were made reluctantly.  “But so it is.  I am but a man, and man is always dissatisfied with his actual, and always looking forward to some good time coming.  Ah, sir, this faculty of imagination that we possess is one of the curses entailed by the fall.  It is forever leading us off from a true enjoyment of what we have.  It has no faith in to-day—­no love for the good and beautiful that really exists.”