ted,--which
could never live, indeed, except in a dream. Now, now that she was
older and perhaps wiser, love meant a partnership, in which each
partner would be honest to the other, in which each would wish and
strive for the other's welfare, so that thus their joint welfare
might be insured. Then, in those early girlish days, it had meant
a total abnegation of self. The one was of earth, and therefore
possible. The other had been a ray from heaven,--and impossible,
except in a dream.

And she had been mistaken in her first love. She admitted that
frankly. He whom she had worshipped had been an idol of clay, and she
knew that it was well for her to have abandoned that idolatry. He had
not only been untrue to her, but, worse than that, had been false in
excusing his untruth. He had not only promised falsely, but had made
such promises with a deliberate, premeditated falsehood. And he had
been selfish, coldly selfish, weighing the value of his own low lusts
against that of her holy love. She had known this, and had parted
from him with an oath to herself that no promised contrition on his
part should ever bring them again together. But she had pardoned him
as a man, though never as a lover, and had bade him welcome again
as a cousin and as her friend's brother. She had again become very
anxious as to his career, not hiding her regard, but professing that
anxiety aloud. She knew him to be clever, ambitious, bold,--and she
believed even yet, in spite of her own experience, that he might not
be bad at heart. Now, as she told herself that in truth she loved the
man to whom her troth was plighted, I fear that she almost thought
more of that other man from whom she had torn herself asunder.

"Why should he find himself unhappy in London?" she said, as she went
back to the letter. "Why should he pretend to condemn the very place
which most men find the fittest for all their energies? Were I a man,
no earthly consideration should induce me to live elsewhere. It is
odd how we differ in all things. However brilliant might be his own
light, he would be contented to hide it under a bushel!"

And at last she recurred to that matter as to which she had been
so anxious when she first opened her lover's letter. It will be
remembered how assured she had expressed herself that Mr Grey would
not condescend to object to her travelling with her cousin. He had
not so condescended. He had written on the matter with a pleasant
joke, like a g