And now at last we may return to our story.
Having seen his uncle, George's next business was to see his lady-love. His was a disposition which would not allow him to remain quiet while his hopes were so doubtful and his heart so racked. Had he been travelling with Miss Baker ever since, and living in daily intercourse with Caroline, it is probable enough that he might by this time have been half tired of her. But his love had had no such safety-valve, and was now, therefore, bubbling and boiling within his heart in a manner very subversive of legal accuracy and injurious to legal studies.
It was absolutely necessary, he said to himself, that he should know on what ground he stood; absolutely necessary, also, that he should be able to talk to some one on the subject. So he wrote to Miss Baker, saying that he intended to do himself the pleasure of renewing his acquaintance with her at Littlebath, and he determined to see Arthur Wilkinson on his way. These were the days in which Wilkinson was taking pupils at Oxford, the days in which he used to think so much of Adela Gauntlet.
The meeting of the two friends was sufficiently joyous; for such love sorrows as those which oppressed Bertram when sitting in the chambers of Mr. Neversaye Die rarely oppress a young man in moments which would otherwise be jovial. And Arthur had at this time gotten over one misery, and not yet fallen into another. He had obtained the fellowship which he had hardly expected, and was commencing the life of a don, with all a don's comforts around him.
"Well, upon my word, I envy you, Arthur; I do, indeed," said Bertram, looking round his cousin's room at Balliol as they sat down to pass an evening quietly together. "This was what I always looked forward to, as you did also; you have obtained it, I have forsworn it."
"Your envy cannot be very envious," said Wilkinson, laughing, "as all my bliss is still within your own reach. You have still your rooms at Oriel if you choose to go into them." For Bertram had been elected to a fellowship at that college.
"All! that's easily said; but somehow it couldn't be. I don't know why it is, Arthur; but I have panted to have the privileges of an ordained priest, and yet it is not to be so. I have looked forward to ordination as the highest ambition of a man, but yet I shall never be ordained."