Strange! I have been poor all my life, yet I never till now felt an actual terror of poverty." Hilary shrank within herself; less even at the words than at something in their tone--something hard, nay fierce; something at once despairing and aggressive.
"It is strange," she said; "such a terror is not like you.

I feel none; I can not even understand it." "No, I knew you could not," he muttered; and was silent.
So was Hilary.

A vague trouble came over her.

Could it be that he, Robert Lyon, had been seized with the _auri sacra fames_, which he had so often inveighed against and despised?
that his long battle with poverty had caused in him such an overweening desire for riches that, to obtain them, he would sacrifice every thing else, exile himself to a far country for years, selling his very life and soul for gold?
Such a thought of him was so terrible--that is, would have been were it tenable--that Hilary for an instant felt herself shiver all over.
The next she spoke out--in justice to him she forced herself to speak out--all her honest soul.
"I do believe that this going abroad to make a fortune, which young men so delight in, is often a most fatal mistake.

They give up far more than they gain--country, home, health.