and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known?
How, even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around my
name, how can I believe that I have awakened her heart to that deep and
real love of which it is capable, and which youth excites in youth? When
we meet at her home, or amidst the quiet yet brilliant society which is
gathered round Madame de Ventadour or the Montaignes, with whom she is an
especial favourite; when we converse; when I sit by her, and her soft
eyes meet mine,--I feel not the disparity of years; my heart speaks to
her, and _that_ is youthful still! But in the more gay and crowded
haunts to which her presence allures me, when I see that fairy form
surrounded by those who have not outlived the pleasures that so naturally
dazzle and captivate her, then, indeed, I feel that my tastes, my habits,
my pursuits, belong to another season of life, and ask myself anxiously
if my nature and my years are those that can make _her_ happy? Then,
indeed, I recognize the wide interval that time and trial place between
one whom the world has wearied, and one for whom the world is new. If
she should discover hereafter that youth should love only youth, my
bitterest anguish would be that of remorse! I know how deeply I love by
knowing how immeasurably dearer her happiness is than my own! I will
wait, then, yet a while, I will examine, I will watch well that I do not
deceive myself. As yet I think that I have no rivals whom I need fear:
surrounded as she is by the youngest and the gayest, she still turns with
evident pleasure to me, whom she calls her friend. She will forego the
amusements she most loves for society in which we can converse more at
ease. You remember, for instance, young Legard? He is here; and, before
I met Evelyn, was much at Lady Doltimore's house. I cannot be blind to
his superior advantages of youth and person; and there is something
striking and prepossessing in the gentle yet manly frankness of his
manner,--and yet no fear of his rivalship ever haunts me. True, that of
late he has been little in Evelyn's society; nor do I think, in the