thought it
would be so pleasant, so delightful, so charming, to travel over in
recollection the world which we were unable to see together. The
beginning is already made. Then, in the evenings, you have taken up your
flute again, accompanying me on the piano, while of visits backwards and
forwards among the neighborhood, there is abundance. For my part, I
have been promising myself out of all this the first really happy summer
I have ever thought to spend in my life."

"Only I cannot see," replied Edward, rubbing his forehead, "how, through
every bit of this which you have been so sweetly and so sensibly laying
before me, the Captain's presence can be any interruption; I should
rather have thought it would give it all fresh zest and life. He was my
companion during a part of my travels. He made many observations from a
different point of view from mine. We can put it all together, and so
make a charmingly complete work of it."

"Well, then, I will acknowledge openly," answered Charlotte, with some
impatience, "my feeling is against this plan. I have an instinct which
tells me no good will come of it."

"You women are invincible in this way," replied Edward. "You are so
sensible, that there is no answering you, then so affectionate, that one
is glad to give way to you; full of feelings, which one cannot wound,
and full of forebodings, which terrify one."

"I am not superstitious," said Charlotte; "and I care nothing for these
dim sensations, merely as such; but in general they are the result of
unconscious recollections of happy or unhappy consequences, which we
have experienced as following on our own or others' actions. Nothing is
of greater moment, in any state of things, than the intervention of a
third person. I have seen friends, brothers and sisters, lovers,
husbands and wives, whose relation to each other, through the accidental
or intentional introduction of a third person, has been altogether
changed--whose whole moral condition has been inverted by it."

"That may very well be," replied Edward, "with people who live on
without looking where they are going; but not, surely, with persons whom
experience has taught to understand themselves."

"That understanding ourselves, my dearest husband," insisted Charlotte,
"is no such certain weapon. It is very often a most dangerous one for
the person who bears it. And out of all this, at least so much seems to
arise, that we should not be in too great a hurry. Let