'You don't mean to give up writing?'

'No, to make it my play. I feel like little Annie, when she called herself puss without a corner. I have serious thoughts of the law. Heigh ho! Good night.'

John grieved over the disappointed tone so unusual in the buoyant Percy, and revolved various devices for finding employment for him; but was obliged to own that a man of his age, whatever his powers, when once set aside from the active world, finds it difficult to make for himself another career. It accounted to John for the degree of depression which he detected in Theodora's manner, which, at all times rather grave, did not often light up into animation, and never into her quaint moods of eccentric determination; she was helpful and kind, but submissive and indifferent to what passed around her.

In fact, Theodora felt the disappointment of which Percy complained, more uniformly than he did himself. He thought no more of it when conversation was going on, when a service was to be done to any living creature, or when he was playing with the children; but the sense of his vexation always hung upon her; perhaps the more because she felt that her own former conduct deserved no happiness, and that his future was involved in hers. She tried to be patient, but she could not be gay.

Her scheme had been for Percy to take a farm, but he answered that he had lived too much abroad, and in towns, to make agriculture succeed in England. In the colonies perhaps,--but her involuntary exclamation of dismay at the idea of letting him go alone, had made him at once abandon the project. When, however, she saw how enforced idleness preyed on him, and with how little spirit he turned to his literary pursuits, she began to think it her duty to persuade him to go; and to this she had on this very night, with a great effort, made up her mind.

'There is space in his composition for more happiness than depends on me,' said she to Violet. 'Exertion, hope, trust in me will make him happy; and he shall not waste his life in loitering here for my sake.'

'Dear Theodora, I fear it will cost you a great deal.'

'Never mind,' said Theodora; 'I am more at peace than I have been for years. Percy has suffered enough through me already.'