me was deficient neither in dignity nor propriety; but I knew her former
feeling was unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but
Opportunity would be too strong for either of these--Temptation would
shiver their restraints.

I was no pope--I could not boast infallibility: in short, if I stayed,
the probability was that, in three months' time, a practical modern
French novel would be in full process of concoction under the roof of
the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern French novels are not to my
taste, either practically or theoretically. Limited as had yet been my
experience of life, I had once had the opportunity of contemplating,
near at hand, an example of the results produced by a course of
interesting and romantic domestic treachery. No golden halo of fiction
was about this example, I saw it bare and real, and it was very
loathsome. I saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean subterfuge, by
the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the infectious
influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced
and prolonged view of this spectacle; those sufferings I did not now
regret, for their simple recollection acted as a most wholesome antidote
to temptation. They had inscribed on my reason the conviction that
unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and
envenomed pleasure--its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison
cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave for ever.

From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave Pelet's, and
that instantly; "but," said Prudence, "you know not where to go, nor how
to live;" and then the dream of true love came over me: Frances Henri
seemed to stand at my side; her slender waist to invite my arm; her
hand to court my hand; I felt it was made to nestle in mine; I could not
relinquish my right to it, nor could I withdraw my eyes for ever from
hers, where I saw so much happiness, such a correspondence of heart with
heart; over whose expression I had such influence; where I could kindle
bliss, infuse awe, stir deep delight, rouse sparkling spirit, and
sometimes waken pleasurable dread. My hopes to will and possess, my
resolutions to merit and rise, rose in array against me; and here I was
about to plunge into the gulf of absolute destitution; "and all this,"
suggested an inward voice, "because you fear an evil which may never
happen!" "It will happen; you KNOW it will," answered that stubborn
mo