pths of my
evil passion were again sounded and aroused, and I resolved yet to
humble the pride and conquer the coldness which galled to the very quick
the morbid acuteness of my self-love. I again attached myself to her
train; I bowed myself to the very dust before her. What to me were
her chilling reply and disdainful civilities?---only still stronger
excitements to persevere.

I spare you and myself the gradual progress of my schemes. A woman may
recover her first passion, it is true; but then she must replace it with
another. That other was denied to Caroline: she had not even children
to engross her thoughts and to occupy her affections; and the gay world,
which to many becomes an object, was to her only an escape.

Clarence, my triumph came! Lady Walden (who had never known our secret)
invited me to her house: Caroline was there. In the same spot where we
had so often stood before, and in which her earliest affections were
insensibly breathed away, in that same spot I drew from her colourless
and trembling lips the confession of her weakness, the restored and
pervading power of my remembrance.

But Caroline was a proud and virtuous woman: even while her heart
betrayed her, her mind resisted; and in the very avowal of her
unconquered attachment, she renounced and discarded me forever. I was
not an ungenerous though a vain man; but my generosity was wayward,
tainted, and imperfect. I could have borne the separation; I could have
severed myself from her; I could have flown to the uttermost parts of
the earth; I could have hoarded there my secret yet unextinguished
love, and never disturbed her quiet by a murmur: but then the fiat of
separation must have come from me! My vanity could not bear that her
lips should reject me, that my part was not to be the nobility of
sacrifice, but the submission of resignation. However, my better
feelings were aroused, and though I could not stifle I concealed my
selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in
the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits
and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my
ominous and guilty love.

But I was then too closely bound to the world not to be perpetually
reminded of its events. My retreat was thronged with occasional
migrators from London; my books were mingled with the news and scandal
of the day. All spoke to me of Lady Merton; not as I loved to picture
her to myself, pale