"Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordinary girl in whom
idleness exaggerates the strength of any fancy over which it dreamily
broods. Isaura Cicogna has her occupations--her genius--her fame--her
career. Honestly speaking, I think that in these she will find a
happiness that no quiet hearth could bestow. I will say no more. I feel
persuaded that were we two united I could not make her happy. With the
irresistible impulse that urges the genius of the writer towards its vent
in public sympathy and applause, she would chafe if I said, 'Be contented
to be wholly mine.' And if I said it not, and felt I had no right to say
it, and allowed the full scope to her natural ambition, what then? She
would chafe yet more to find that I had no fellowship in her aims and
ends--that where I should feel pride, I felt humiliation. It would be
so; I cannot help it, 'tis my nature."

"So be it then. When, next year perhaps, you visit Paris, you will be
safe from my officious interference! Isaura will be the wife of
another."

Graham pressed his hand to his heart with the sudden movement of one who
feels there an agonising spasm--his cheek, his very lips were bloodless.

"I told you," he said bitterly, "that your fears of my influence over the
happiness of one so gifted, and so strong in such gifts, were groundless;
you allow that I should be very soon forgotten?"

"I allow no such thing--I wish I could. But do you know so little of a
woman's heart (and in matters of heart, I never yet heard that genius had
a talisman against emotion),--do you know so little of a woman's heart as
not to know that the very moment in which she may accept a marriage the