gay world, which to many becomes an object, was to her only an escape.

Clarence, my triumph came! Lady Walden (who had never known our
secret) invited me to her house: Caroline was there. In the same spot
where we had so often stood before, and in which her earliest
affections were insensibly breathed away, in that same spot I drew
from her colourless and trembling lips the confession of her weakness,
the restored and pervading power of my remembrance.

But Caroline was a proud and virtuous woman: even while her heart
betrayed her, her mind resisted; and in the very avowal of her
unconquered attachment, she renounced and discarded me forever. I was
not an ungenerous though a vain man; but my generosity was wayward,
tainted, and imperfect. I could have borne the separation; I could
have severed myself from her; I could have flown to the uttermost
parts of the earth; I could have hoarded there my secret yet
unextinguished love, and never disturbed her quiet by a murmur: but
then the fiat of separation must have come from me! My vanity could
not bear that her lips should reject me, that my part was not to be
the nobility of sacrifice, but the submission of resignation.
However, my better feelings were aroused, and though I could not
stifle I concealed my selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to
town; I buried myself in the country; and, amidst the literary studies
to which, though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I
endeavoured to forget my ominous and guilty love.

But I was then too closely bound to the world not to be perpetually
reminded of its events. My retreat was thronged with occasional
migrators from London; my books were mingled with the news and scandal
of the day. All spoke to me of Lady Merton; not as I loved to picture