very life seemed to go
with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man's love and
devotion.

XXXII.

FULL TIDE.

"A skirmish of wit between them."

--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
the reflection of her friend's scarcely comprehended joy was on her
countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.

"Yes," said she, with a distressed blush. "Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
there."

It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
an