heart most earnestly longed for; but I looked forward
with a lover's eye, and was content. And thus we wandered slowly back
again--back to meet one who possessed the power to change the aspect of
both our lives; the power to darken mine on earth--and who was he? A
mere boy--a lover of Jennie's, who impatiently awaited our return that
very night. They had been playmates in childhood, but had not met since
then.

Had I been less certain that her love would be mine in the future, I
should have trembled when I looked upon this man; for he possessed those
gifts in their richness and fulness that most easily win a woman's love.
Then, too, he was her mother's guest--with Jennie, morning, noon, and
night--invariably our companion in our frequent walks--always by her
side, and with a mingling of tenderness and reverence proffering that
devoted and delicate homage which most readily finds its way to the
affections of an artless maiden.

I was too unused to the world _then_ to know it; but have deeply
realized since how irresistibly she must have charmed one so accustomed
to the heartless coquetry of fashionable flirts, by the timid,
wondering, child-like simplicity with which she received all this
homage.

I should have known how this would end; but my faith had made me blind.
Indeed, I was even then conscious how infinitely he was my superior in
all that pertained to outward things: he was rich, I poor; he possessed
the varied information of the travelled man, the ease and grace of one
familiar with the world, and I had all the awkwardness and abstracted
reserve of an absorbed student. I was deeply, painfully conscious of
this. Yet, while I felt she did not return his ardent, ever-increasing
love, perhaps did not even comprehend it; while the spirituality of our
communion still in some degree remained unbroken, I was content.

I could calmly watch his ever-varying moods from gay to grave, from
grave to sad, striving by each in turn with finished art to touch the
heart he felt he had not won--smiling securely, I would sometimes murmur
in my happiness the while: 'Passion born of earth, not the true love
that discerneth its own, impels thee. Thy soul's betrothed is perchance
of another country; turn to seek thy own; Jennie is _mine_, not
_thine_!' No need to tell how, at first all unconsciously to herself, he
gained the priceless treasure of her love. No need to tell how he won
her heart from mine. The memory of all this is ve