n that unfortunate way--for ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is
unfortunate--in which many men of susceptibility do occasionally fall in
love in their youth--a way that brands the heart for life in a fashion
that can no more be effaced than the stamp of a hot iron can be effaced
from the physical body. Such an affection--which is not altogether of the
earth--will, when it overcomes a man, prove either the greatest blessing
of his life or one of the heaviest, most enduring curses that a malignant
fate can heap upon his head. For if he achieves his desire, even though
he serve his seven years, surely for him life will be robbed of half its
evil. But if he lose her, either through misfortune or because he gave
all this to one who did not understand the gift, or one who looked at
love and on herself as a currency wherewith to buy her place and the
luxury of days, then he will be of all men among the most miserable. For
nothing can give him back that which has gone from him.

Eustace had never seen Augusta but twice in his life; but then passion
does not necessarily depend upon constant previous intercourse with its
object. Love at first sight is common enough, and in this instance
Eustace was not altogether dependent upon the spoken words of his
adored, or on his recollection of her very palpable beauty. For he had
her books. To those who know something of the writer--sufficient, let us
say, to enable him to put an approximate value on his or her sentiments,
so as to form a more or less accurate guess as to when, he is speaking
from his own mind, when he is speaking from the mind of the puppet in
hand, and when he is merely putting a case--a person's books are full of
information, and bring that person into a closer and more intimate
contact with the reader than any amount of personal intercourse. For
whatever is best and whatever is worst in an individual will be reflected
in his pages, seeing that, unless he is the poorest of hack authors, he
must of necessity set down therein the images that pass across the
mirrors of his heart.

Thus it seemed to Eustace, who knew "Jemima's Vow" and also her
previous abortive work almost by heart, that he was very intimately
acquainted with Augusta, and as he was walking home that May evening,
he was reflecting sadly enough of all that he had lost through that
cruel shipwreck. He had lost Augusta, and, what was more, he had lost
his uncle and his uncle's vast fortune. For he, too,