He began a play, which was to be another great work, "Marcolini." He had no playwright's eye for situations, but the conversation is animated, and the characters finely drawn, with more discrimination than one would expect from so young an author.
This work was interrupted at the end of Act III.

by pressing calls to other studies.

But it was not that he had forgotten Adele.

From time to time he wrote verses to her or about her; and as in 1838 she was sent to school with her sisters at Newhall, near Chelmsford, to "finish" her in English, in that August he saw her again.

She had lost some of her first girlish prettiness, but that made no difference.