laugh of a life fresh as an April morn. 'Hark!' I said, 'is not that the
sweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled? Listening, I
forgot my weight of years. Why? because listening, I remembered you.
'Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh,' whispered
Prudence. 'Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own.' Mind!
O frigid pedantry! Mind!--had not yours been a volume open to my eyes;
in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to human
sense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!--wed
another! 'Hush,' I said, 'it shall be. Eighteen years since we parted--
seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her again, the
very change that time must have brought will cure. I saw you--all the
past rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled--never more to dream that
I can shake off the curse of memory--blent with each drop of my blood--
woven with each tissue-throbbing in each nerve-bone of my bone, and flesh
of my flesh--poison-root from which every thought buds to wither--the
curse to have loved and to have trusted you!"

"Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?" cried Caroline, clasping her hands
to her bosom." And is my sin so great--is it so unpardonable? Oh, if in
a heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honour
to inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only--only--as a curse!
Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me. Call it
hate--it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives, can I
never, never again--never, now that I know I am less unworthy of you by
the very anguish I feel to have so stung you--can I never again be the
Caroline of old?"

"Ha, ha!" burst forth the unrelenting man, with a bitter laugh--"see the
real coarseness of a woman's nature under all its fine-spun frippery!
Behold these delicate creatures, that we scarcely dare to woo! how little