not be ignorant
of the feelings with which you inspired him. He worshipped you as
devotedly as a gardener, a servant, can worship his young mistress. He
looked on his case as still more hopeless than mine, though with regard
to our social position, his was by far the more settled of the two. The
quiet sympathy of hopelessness united us. Often when he had come to
fetch us from the conservatory and you were skipping before us after
your dog, and overtaking it, would catch it up in your arms, and kiss
it, he would turn to me with jealous wrath, and say: 'Now, can you
understand, Master Valentine, what pleasure our young lady can find in
hugging that stupid brute?' With an indignant shake of his head; the
hair of which he always arranged carefully, since he served at table,
and could offer you the dishes. If you confess the truth, you will own
that you only fondled that ugly creature for the sake of driving us
distracted."

"Do not speak ill of the dead," rejoined Eugenie. "Cora sleeps the
sleep of death, not far from the pond where the bench stands underneath
the elm-tree; do you remember it?"

"How could I have forgotten it? Was it not on that bench that I
fastened your skates, when we started on that skating expedition with
your cousin Lucy. How is your cousin getting on?"

"She is now a fine lady, with a large family. If she only knew that I
have met you here! Not more than a month ago we were talking of you.
She has a kind remembrance of you, and has not forgotten that bright
winter's afternoon, when we first initiated you in the art of skating,
and she maintains that you squeezed her hand on that occasion with more
ardour than your later behaviour warranted. Since then a shade of
fickleness darkens the otherwise favourable recollection she has of
you."

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed laughing; "so the most harmless cannot
escape suspicion. To be sure I was not wholly guiltless, but as it so
often happens I must suffer for another sin than that which I really
committed. When you both held my hands to guide my first steps on the
slippery plain, I longed to express more to you by the firm pressure of
my hand than the mere desire not to fall. But you were always
inaccessible to any intelligence of that kind. You will now bear me
witness that I need not reproach myself with regard to little Lucy. Ah!
I still remember it all as if it had been yesterday! I still feel the
glow which rushed through my veins, in spite of the