that the object beloved must die. What a perpetuity of fear that
knowledge creates! The avalanche that may crush us depends upon a single
breath!"

"Is not that too refined a sentiment? Custom surely blunts us to every
chance, every danger, that may happen to us hourly. Were the avalanche
over you for a day,--I grant your state of torture,--but had an avalanche
rested over you for years, and not yet fallen, you would forget that it
could ever fall; you would eat, sleep, and make love, as if it were not!"

"Ha! my Lord, you say well--you say well," said Aram, with a marked
change of countenance; and, quickening his pace, he joined Lester's side,
and the thread of the previous conversation was broken off.

The Earl afterwards, in walking through the gardens (an excursion which
he proposed himself, for he was somewhat of an horticulturist), took an
opportunity to renew the subject.

"You will pardon me," said he, "but I cannot convince myself that man
would be happier were he without emotions; and that to enjoy life he
should be solely dependant on himself!"

"Yet it seems to me," said Aram, "a truth easy of proof; if we love, we
place our happiness in others. The moment we place our happiness in
others, comes uncertainty, but uncertainty is the bane of happiness.
Children are the source of anxiety to their parents;--his mistress to the
lover. Change, accident, death, all menace us in each person whom we
regard. Every new tie opens new channels by which grief can invade us;
but, you will say, by which joy also can flow in;--granted! But in human
life is there not more grief than joy? What is it that renders the