"Fortunately my mind had lost its former liveliness. The pendulum,
far from being urged to unruly motion, continued to swing slowly in
the narrow space where it had oscillated for so many years. I said
to myself that to renew my intimacy with the Gilmores would be to
run the almost certain risk of reviving the sorrows and the
disappointments of the past. I was then calm and rational. It would
be madness in me, I felt, to aspire to the hand of a young, wealthy,
and much admired widow. To venture to see Ellen again was to incur
the risk of seeing my reason once more wrecked, and the fatal
chimera which had been the source of all my misery start into life
again. If we are to believe what poets say, love ennobles man and
exalts him into a demigod. It may be so, but it turns him likewise
into a fool and a madman. That was my case. At any cost I was to
guard against that fatal passion. I argued seriously with myself,
and I determined to let the past be, and to reject every opportunity
of bringing it to life again.

"A few days before my meeting with Francis, I had received tidings
of the death of an old relative, whom I scarcely knew. In my
childhood I had, on one or two occasions, spent my holidays at his
house. He was gloomy and taciturn, but nevertheless he had always
welcomed me kindly. I have a vague remembrance of having been told
that he had been in love with my mother once upon a time, and that
on hearing of her marriage he had retired into the solitude which he
never left till the day of his death. Be that as it may, I had not
lost my place in his affections, it seems: he had continued to feel
an interest in me; and on his deathbed he had remembered me, and
left me the greater part of his not very considerable fortune. I
inherited little money; but there was a small, comfortably-furnished
country-house, and an adjoining farm let on a long lease for two