"Must I stand alone in life's busy crowd,
A living heart in a death-like shroud?"

And then his heart burst out its passionate "No." He had not recognized
those responsive emotions in that lovely girl to forget them so soon
again, he had been searching for them too long not to prize them now. He
had thought he was anchoring at despair, and now that a star broke
through the clouded heavens, beckoning him on, was he mad to scorn the
hope that lay within his grasp? No, indeed, and that very night, under
the immediate impulse of his new-born emotions, Guy Elersley made up his
mind.

We cannot be surprised at this sudden change in Guy, although it was the
most unexpected and unlooked for circumstance that could possibly have
come to him. Falling in and out of love is almost so certain a portion
of our destiny, that we should never be surprised by it. We know of love
as we do of death, that it is to come some day, if not now, by and by.
We wait for it without expecting it, we recognize the symptoms that
foretell its approach, but of its real bearing on our future lives, we
can tell nothing. Time alone, as it unravels the strange mysteries,
shows us in what way our love can prove a blessing or a curse. If we
were so constituted, in general, as to make up our minds coolly and
calculatingly, to fall in love sensibly, but no, with most of us, a
look, a word, a pressure of the hand, a sigh, a flower or some such
trifling thing, has sufficed to plunge us hoplessly into the delirium of
"love." Dreamy eyes that fascinate us, pretty words that gratify us,
little signs of preference, have been the prices of human hearts from
time immemorial. The pity is, that love so often dies of its own excess,
making the dreamy eyes fiery with anger and hatred, turning the pretty
words into violent reproaches, and substituting the deeds of preference