"Ah," said Maltravers, with a half sigh, "yours is the age for those
dazzling pleasures; to me they are 'the twice-told tale.'"

Maltravers meant it not, but this remark chafed Legard. He thought it
conveyed a sarcasm on the childishness of his own mind or the levity of
his pursuits; his colour mounted, as he replied,--

"It is not, I fear, the slight difference of years between us,--it is the
difference of intellect you would insinuate; but you should remember all
men have not your resources; all men cannot pretend to genius!"

"My dear Legard," said Maltravers, kindly, "do not fancy that I could
have designed any insinuation half so presumptuous and impertinent.
Believe me, I envy you, sincerely and sadly, all those faculties of
enjoyment which I have worn away. Oh, how I envy you! for, were they
still mine, then--then, indeed, I might hope to mould myself into greater
congeniality with the beautiful and the young!"

Maltravers paused a moment, and resumed, with a grave smile: "I trust,
Legard, that you will be wiser than I have been; that you will gather
your roses while it is yet May: and that you will not live to thirty-six,
pining for happiness and home, a disappointed and desolate man; till,
when your ideal is at last found, you shrink back appalled, to discover
that you have lost none of the tendencies to love, but many of the graces
by which love is to be allured!"

There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words that they
went home at once to Legard's sympathies. He felt irresistibly impelled
to learn the worst.