It is hardly necessary to say that he had made no attempt to establish any
correspondence with the poor girl. Indeed by this time he found himself not
unwilling to forget her, and cherished a hope that she had, if not
forgotten, at least dismissed from her mind all that had taken place
between them. Now and then in the night he would wake to a few tender
thoughts of her, but before the morning they would vanish, and during the
day he would drown any chance reminiscence of her in a careful polishing
and repolishing of his sentences, aping the style of Chalmers or of Robert
Hall, and occasionally inserting some fine-sounding quotation; for apparent
richness of composition was his principal aim, not truth of meaning, or
lucidity of utterance.
I can hardly be presumptuous in adding that, although growing in a certain
popularity with men, he was not thus growing in favour with God. And as he
continued to hear nothing about Isy, the hope at length, bringing with it a
keen shoot of pleasure, awoke in him that he was never to hear of her more.
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