delicate hearts of yours have, too, felt the throb. And between the
last 'ob' in the word throb and the words now written, I have passed a
delicious period of perhaps an hour, perhaps a minute, I know not how
long, thinking of that holy first love and of her who inspired it. How
clearly every single incident of the passion is remembered by me!
and yet 'twas long, long since. I was but a child then--a child at
school--and, if the truth must be told, L--ra R-ggl-s (I would not write
her whole name to be made one of the Marquess of Hertford's executors)
was a woman full thirteen years older than myself; at the period of
which I write she must have been at least five-and-twenty. She and her
mother used to sell tarts, hard-bake, lollipops, and other such simple
comestibles, on Wednesdays and Saturdays (half-holidays), at a private
school where I received the first rudiments of a classical education.
I used to go and sit before her tray for hours, but I do not think the
poor girl ever supposed any motive led me so constantly to her little
stall beyond a vulgar longing for her tarts and her ginger-beer. Yes,
even at that early period my actions were misrepresented, and the
fatality which has oppressed my whole life began to show itself,--the
purest passion was misinterpreted by her and my school-fellows, and
they thought I was actuated by simple gluttony. They nicknamed me
Alicompayne.

Well, be it so. Laugh at early passion ye who will; a highborn boy madly
in love with a lowly ginger-beer girl! She married afterwards, took the
name of Latter, and now keeps with her old husband a turnpike, through
which I often ride; but I can recollect her bright and rosy of a sunny
summer afternoon, her red cheeks shaded by a battered straw bonnet, her
tarts and ginger-beer upon a neat white cloth before her, mending blue
worsted stockings until the young gentlemen should interrupt her by
coming to buy.