He walked off by himself across Guestwick Common, and through the woods of Guestwick Manor, up by the big avenue of elms in Lord De Guest's park, trying to resolve how he might rescue himself from this scrape.

Here, over the same ground, he had wandered scores of times in his earlier years, when he knew nothing beyond the innocence of his country home, thinking of Lily Dale, and swearing to himself that she should be his wife.

Here he had strung together his rhymes, and fed his ambition with high hopes, building gorgeous castles in the air, in all of which Lilian reigned as a queen; and though in those days he had known himself to be awkward, poor, uncared for by any in the world except his mother and his sister, yet he had been happy in his hopes,--happy in his hopes, even though he had never taught himself really to believe that they would be realised.

But now there was nothing in his hopes or thoughts to make him happy.

Everything was black, and wretched, and ruinous.
What would it matter, after all, even if he should marry Amelia Roper, seeing that Lily was to be given to another?
But then the idea of Amelia as he had seen her that night through the chink in the door came upon his memory, and he confessed to himself that life with such a wife as that would be a living death.
At one moment he thought that he would tell his mother everything, and leave her to write an answer to Amelia's letter.