sinking into mere passion for a handsome boy, and so down into self-
contempt and suicide?

She was conscious, I do believe, of no other reason than that she
gave; but consciousness is a dim candle--over a deep mine.

'After all,' she said pettishly, 'people will call it a mere
imitation of Shelley's Alastor. And what harm if it is? Is there
to be no female Alastor? Has not the woman as good a right as the
man to long after ideal beauty--to pine and die if she cannot find
it; and regenerate herself in its light?'

'Yo-hoo-oo-oo! Youp, youp! Oh-hooo!' arose doleful through the
echoing shrubbery.

Argemone started and looked out. It was not a banshee, but a
forgotten fox-hound puppy, sitting mournfully on the gravel-walk
beneath, staring at the clear ghastly moon.

She laughed and blushed--there was a rebuke in it. She turned to go
to rest; and as she knelt and prayed at her velvet faldstool, among
all the nicknacks which now-a-days make a luxury of devotion, was it
strange if, after she had prayed for the fate of nations and
churches, and for those who, as she thought, were fighting at Oxford
the cause of universal truth and reverend antiquity, she remembered
in her petitions the poor godless youth, with his troubled and
troubling eloquence? But it was strange that she blushed when she
mentioned his name--why should she not pray for him as she prayed
for others?