bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something divides us
eternally. Forgive me--I should have told you before; but your love was
sweet! Never mention me.'

That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful condition of
things, daughter and parents left London to pay off a promised visit to
a relative in a western county. No message or letter of entreaty could
wring from her any explanation. She begged him not to follow her, and
the most bewildering point was that her father and mother appeared, from
the tone of a letter Graye received from them, as vexed and sad as he
at this sudden renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting her
reason as valid, they knew what that reason was, and did not intend to
reveal it.

A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway's house
and saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his friend
answered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her. But very poor
food to a lover is intelligence of a mistress filtered through a friend.
Huntway could tell nothing definitely. He said he believed there had
been some prior flirtation between Cytherea and her cousin, an officer
of the line, two or three years before Graye met her, which had suddenly
been terminated by the cousin's departure for India, and the young
lady's travelling on the Continent with her parents the whole of the
ensuing summer, on account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway said
that circumstances had rendered Graye's attachment more hopeless still.
Cytherea's mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and estates
in the west of England by the rapid fall of some intervening lives. This
had caused their removal from the small house in Bloomsbury, and, as it
appeared, a renunciation of their old friends in that quarter.

Young Graye concluded that his Cytherea had forgotten him and his love.
But he could not forget her.

2. FROM 1843 TO 1861

Eight years later, feeling lonely and depressed--a man without
relatives, with many acquaintances but no friends--Ambrose Graye met
a young lady of a different kind, fairly endowed with money and good
gifts. As to caring very deeply for another woman after the loss of
Cytherea, it was an absolute impossibility with him. With all, the
beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit;
but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will
make a passing love permanent for ever.

This seco