n a golden future, or glorying in
a delicious dream of present bliss; to touch with ceremonious respect
that hand you have so often held fast within your own; to behold with
respectful distance that form beside which you have sat for hours, lost
in happy fancies; to stand, as it were, and trace out with the eye some
path in life we might have followed, wondering whither it would have
led us, if to some higher pinnacle of gratified ambition, if to
disappointments darker than those we have ever known, speculating on a
future which is already become a past, and canvassing within our hearts
the follies that have misled and the faults that have wrecked us! Such
are among the inevitable reminiscences of meeting; and they are full of
a soft and touching sorrow, not all unpleasing, either, as they remind
us of our youth and its buoyancy. Far otherwise was the present case.
Whatever might have been the bold confidence with which Lady Hester
protested her belief in Norwood's honor, her own heartfelt knowledge of
the man refuted the assertion. She knew thoroughly that he was perfectly
devoid of all principle, and merely possessed that conventional degree
of fair dealing indispensable to association with his equals. That he
would do anything short of what would subject him to disgrace she
had long seen; and perhaps the unhappy moment had come when even this
restraint was no longer a barrier. And yet, with all this depreciating
sense of the man, would it be believed she had once loved him! ay, with
as sincere an affection as she was capable of feeling for anything.

'T is true, time and its consequences had effaced much of this feeling.
His own indifference had done something, her new relations with the
world had done more; and if she ever thought of him now, it was with
a degree of half terror that there lived one man who had so thoroughly
read all the secrets of her heart, and knew every sentiment of her
nature.

Norwood was sitting in a chair as she entered, amusing himself with
the gambols of a little Blenheim spaniel, whose silver collar bore the
coronet of the Russian prince. He never perceived Lady Hester until she
was close beside him, and in an easy, half-indifferent tone, said,

"How d' ye do, my Lord?"

"What, Hester!" said he, starting up, and taking her hand in both his
own.

She withdrew it languidly, and seating herself, not upon the sofa to
which he wished to lead her, but in a chair, asked when he had arrived,