ing, turned away; it was not you! I heard the silvery laugh of a life fresh as an April morn. 'Hark!' I said, 'is not that the sweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled?' Listening, I forgot my weight of years. Why! because listening, I remembered you. 'Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh,' whispered Prudence. 'Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own.' Mind!—oh frigid pedantry! Mind!—had not yours been a volume open to my eyes, in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to human sense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!—wed another! 'Hush,' I said, 'it shall be. Eighteen years since we parted—seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her again, the very change that time must have brought will cure.' I saw you—all the Past rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled—never more to dream that I can shake off the curse of memory—blent with each drop of my blood—woven with each tissue—throbbing in each nerve—bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh—poison-root from which every thought buds to wither—the curse to have loved and to have trusted you!"
"Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?" cried Caroline, clasping herhands to her bosom. "And is my sin so great—is it so unpardonable! Oh, if in a heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honor to inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only—only as a curse! Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me. Call it hate—it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives, can I never, never again—never, now that I know I am less unworthy of you by the very anguish I feel to have so stung you—can I never again be the Caroline of old!"
"Ha, ha!" burst forth the unrelenting man, with a bitter laugh!—"see the real coarseness of a woman's nature under all its fine-spun frippery! Behold these delicate creatures, that we scarcely dare to woo! how little they even comprehend the idolatry they inspire! The Caroline of old! Lo, the virgin whose hand we touched with knightly homage, whose first bashful kiss was hallowed as the gale of paradise, deserts us—sells herself at the altar—sanctifies there her very infidelity to us; and when years have passed, and a death has restored her freedom, she comes to us as if she had never pillowed her head on another's bosom, and says, 'Can I not again be the Caroline of old!' We men are too rude to forgive the faithless. Where is the Caroline I loved? You—are—my Lady Montfort! Look round, On these turfs you, then a child, played beside my chil-
