you. Why must you itch
To be running away, on the eve of all this,
To a woman whom never for once did you miss
All these years since you left her? Who knows what may hap?
This letter--to ME--is a palpable trap.
The woman has changed since you knew her. Perchance
She yet seeks to renew her youth's broken romance.
When women begin to feel youth and their beauty
Slip from them, they count it a sort of a duty
To let nothing else slip away unsecured
Which these, while they lasted, might once have procured.
Lucile's a coquette to the end of her fingers,
I will stake my last farthing. Perhaps the wish lingers
To recall the once reckless, indifferent lover
To the feet he has left; let intrigue now recover
What truth could not keep. 'Twere a vengeance, no doubt--
A triumph;--but why must YOU bring it about?
You are risking the substance of all that you schemed
To obtain; and for what? some mad dream you have dream'd.

ALFRED.

But there's nothing to risk. You exaggerate, Jack,
You mistake. In three days, at the most, I am back.

JOHN.

Ay, but how?... discontented, unsettled, upset,
Bearing with you a comfortless twinge of regret.
Preoccupied, sulky, and likely enough
To make your betroth'd break off all in a huff.
Three days, do you say? But in three days who knows
What may happen? I don't, nor do you, I suppose.

V.

Of all the good things in this good world around us,
The one most abundantly furnish'd and found us,
And which, for that reason, we least care about,
And can best spare our friends, is good counsel, no doubt.
But advice, when 'tis sought from a friend (though civility
May forbid to avow it), means mere liability
In the bill we already have drawn on Remorse,
Which we deem that a true friend is bound to indorse.
A mere lecture on debt from that friend is a bore.
Thus, the better his cousin's advice was, the more
Alfred Vargrave with angry resentment opposed it.
And, having the worst of the contest, he closed it
With so firm a resolve his bad ground to maintain,
That, sadly perceiving resistance was vain,
And argument fruitless, the amiable Jack
Came to terms and assisted his cousin to pack
A slender valise (the one small condescension
Which his final remon