new one. Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in
imminent danger here. I have established a proper mastery over my young
lady. 'Nous avons change de role'. Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly,
is becoming conscious--a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the
creature's growth. There is vast capacity in the girl. She has plainly
not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might
be at ease if--if he chose to disregard what is due to decency. But,
why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning
disparity of years between husband and wife? I know innumerable cases of
an old husband making a young wife happy. My friend, Dr. Galliot,
married his ward, and he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance.
She has been publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death.
That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and
stood bald at the altar. Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and,
but for his preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that
the ordinary reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who
earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life. But,
what are fifty years? They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence.
He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is
virtually more eligible--to use the cant phrase of gossips--than a young
man, even for a young girl. And may not some fair and fresh reward be
justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?

I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
and jealous as General Althorpe. For, with my thorough knowledge of
myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself
to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world. Nor, as I am and know
myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble. When my
filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas
of her own. Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed