plenty of fish in
the water; if I hook one in 'The Trows,' I shall let myself go whither
the current takes me. Life has for weeks been odious to me; for what is
life without honour, without love, and coupled with shame and remorse?
Repentance I cannot call the emotion which gnaws me at the heart, for in
similar circumstances (unlikely as these are to occur) I feel that I
would do the same thing again.

"Are we but automata, worked by springs, moved by the stronger impulse,
and unable to choose for ourselves which impulse that shall be? Even
now, in decreeing my own destruction, do I exercise free-will, or am I
the sport of hereditary tendencies, of mistaken views of honour, of a
seeming self-sacrifice, which, perhaps, is but selfishness in disguise? I
blight my unfortunate father's old age; I destroy the last of an ancient
house; but I remove from the path of Olive Dunne the shadow that must
rest upon the sunshine of what will eventually, I trust, be a happy life,
unvexed by memories of one who loved her passionately. Dear Olive! how
pure, how ardent was my devotion to her none knows better than you. But
Olive had, I will not say a fault, though I suffer from it, but a
quality, or rather two qualities, which have completed my misery. Lightly
as she floats on the stream of society, the most casual observer, and
even the enamoured beholder, can see that Olive Dunne has great pride,
and no sense of humour. Her dignity is her idol. What makes her, even
for a moment, the possible theme of ridicule is in her eyes an
unpardonable sin. This sin, I must with penitence confess, I did indeed
commit. Another woman might have forgiven me. I know not how that may
be; I throw myself on the mercy of the court. But, if another could pity
and pardon, to Olive this was impossible. I have never seen her since
that fatal moment when, paler than her orange blossoms, she swept through
the porch of the church, while I, dishevelled, mud-stained,
half-drowned--ah! that memory will torture me if memory at all remains.
And yet, fool, maniac, that I was, I could not resist the wild, mad
impulse to laugh which shook the rustic spectators, and which in my case
was due, I trust, to hysterical but _not_ unmanly emotion. If any woman,
any bride, could forgive such an apparent but most unintentional insult,
Olive Dunne, I knew, was not that woman. My abject letters of
explanation, my appeals for mercy, were returned unopened. Her parents