“Oh, you have heard of him. He is a man, I presume, known to many. Are you sure that is the back of his house?”
“Yes, now I look again I am quite sure; I know it by some peculiar chimnies. I have gazed on it for hours with a hope now extinguished for ever.”
“You—you?”
“Yes, sir. My story is a strange one; I have lost both the natural and acquired ties that bind me to life, I am an orphan, and I can never more behold her who would have filled the void in my heart.”
“But you speak of this Hartleton as if you knew him. Is such the fact?”
“I am scarcely warranted in saying so much,” replied Albert, “although I have seen and conversed with him.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes; and he gave me hopes, which were for a time my thoughts by day and my dreams by night—my hopes which I clung to as some drowning mariner clings to a stray spar; but alas! I have lost now the power to dream myself happy.”
“He disappointed you?”
“He did. Perhaps he could not do otherwise. I have no right to censure him, but he could not know how my heart was sinking, and he cannot know how it has been wrecked, or perhaps he would have done more or tried to do more. But I am querulous upon this subject, and may blame him causelessly. It is a fault of human nature to mistake the want of power for the want of will, and to him who loves all things appear so very possible.”