istening,
I forgot my weight of years. Why? because listening, I remembered you.
'Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh,' whispered
Prudence. 'Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own.' Mind!
O frigid pedantry! Mind!--had not yours been a volume open to my eyes;
in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to human
sense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!--wed
another! 'Hush,' I said, 'it shall be. Eighteen years since we
parted--seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her
again, the very change that time must have brought will cure. I saw
you--all the past rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled--never more
to dream that I can shake off the curse of memory--blent with each drop
of my blood--woven with each tissue-throbbing in each nerve-bone of my
bone, and flesh of my flesh--poison-root from which every thought buds
to wither--the curse to have loved and to have trusted you!"

"Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?" cried Caroline, clasping her hands
to her bosom. "And is my sin so great--is it so unpardonable? Oh, if in
a heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honour
to inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only--only--as a
curse! Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me.
Call it hate--it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives,
can I never, never again--never, now that I know I am less unworthy of
you by the very anguish I feel to have so stung you--can I never again
be the Caroline of old?"

"Ha, ha!" burst forth the unrelenting man, with a bitter laugh--"see the
real coarseness of a woman's nature under all its fine-spun frippery!
Behold these delicate creatures, that we scarcely dare to woo! how
little they even comprehend the idolatry they inspire! The Caroline of
old! Lo, the virgin whose hand we touched with knightly homage, whose
first bashful kiss was hallowed as the gate of paradise, deserts
us--sells herself at the altar--sanctifies there her very infidelity to
us; and when years have passed, and a death has restored her freedom,
she comes to us as if she had never pillowed her head on another's
bosom, and says 'Can I not again be the Caroline of old?' We men are
too rude to forgive the faithless. Where is the Caroline I loved?
YOU--are--my Lady Montfort! Look round. On these turfs, you, then a
child, played beside my children. They are dead, but less de