fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and
fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recovering from the
shock of hearing from Isaura's lips that she was irrevocably affianced to
another, were not those of self-reproach. They were those of intense
bitterness against her who, if really so much attached to him as he had
been led to hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her heart to
marriage with another. This bitterness was no doubt unjust; but I
believe it to be natural to men of a nature so proud and of affections so
intense as Graham's, under similar defeats of hope. Resentment is the
first impulse in a man loving with the whole ardour of his soul,
rejected, no matter why or wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause
to believe he himself was beloved; and though Graham's standard of honour
was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not view honour in the
same light as woman does, when involved in analogous difficulties of
position. Graham conscientiously thought that if Isaura so loved him
as to render distasteful an engagement to another which could only very
recently have been contracted, it would be more honourable frankly so to
tell the accepted suitor than to leave him in ignorance that her heart
was estranged. But these engagements are very solemn things with girls
like Isaura, and hers was no ordinary obligation of woman-honour. Had
the accepted one been superior in rank-fortune--all that flatters the
ambition of woman in the choice of marriage; had he been resolute, and
strong, and self-dependent amid the trials and perils of life--then
possibly the woman's honour might find excuse in escaping the penalties
of its pledge. But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked
to her as his saving angel in body, in mind, and soul-to say to him,
"Give me back my freedom," would be to abandon him to death and to sin.
But Graham could not of course divine why what he as a man thought right
was to Isaura as woman impossible: and he returned to his old prejudiced
notion that there is no real depth and ardour of affection for human