oks were bunches of them gathered
to place at her feet. No harm now in reading between the lines of his
books and culling what is the common knowledge of his friends in the
north, that he had to serve a long apprenticeship before he won her.
For long his attachment was unreciprocated, though she was ever his
loyal friend, and the volume called 'Unrequited Love' belongs to the
period when he thought his life must be lived alone. The circumstances
of their marriage are at once too beautiful and too painful to be
dwelt on here. Enough to say that, should the particulars ever be
given to the world, with the simple story of his life, a finer
memorial will have been raised to him than anything in stone, such as
we see a committee is already being formed to erect. We venture to
propose as a title for his biography, 'The Story of the Perfect
Lover.'"

Yes, that memorial committee was formed; but so soon do people forget
the hero of yesterday's paper that only the secretary attended the
first meeting, and he never called another. But here, five and twenty
years later, is the biography, with the title changed. You may wonder
that I had the heart to write it. I do it, I have sometimes pretended
to myself, that we may all laugh at the stripling of a rogue, but that
was never my reason. Have I been too cunning, or have you seen through
me all the time? Have you discovered that I was really pitying the boy
who was so fond of boyhood that he could not with years become a man,
telling nothing about him that was not true, but doing it with
unnecessary scorn in the hope that I might goad you into crying:
"Come, come, you are too hard on him!"

Perhaps the manner in which he went to his death deprives him of these
words. Had the castle gone on fire that day while he was at tea, and
he perished in the flames in a splendid attempt to save the life of
his enemy (a very probable thing), then you might have felt a little
liking for him. Yet he would have been precisely the same person. I
don't blame you, but you are a Tommy.

Grizel knew how he died. She found Lady Pippinworth's letter to him,
and understood who the woman was; but it was only in hopes of
obtaining the lost manuscript that she went to see her. Then Lady
Pippinworth told her all. Are you sorry that Grizel knew? I am not
sorry--I am glad. As a child, as a girl, and as a wife, the truth had
been all she wanted, and she wanted it just the same when she was a
widow. We have a ri