which to many women afford the one sweetness in life which they really
relish, were nothing to him. There are both men and women to whom even
the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even when they
exist to the detriment of hope. It is sweet to such persons to be
melancholy, sweet to pine, sweet to feel that they are now wretched
after a romantic fashion as have been those heroes and heroines of
whose sufferings they have read in poetry. But there was nothing of
this with Roger Carbury. He had, as he believed, found the woman that
he really wanted, who was worthy of his love, and now, having fixed
his heart upon her, he longed for her with an amazing longing. He had
spoken the simple truth when he declared that life had become
indifferent to him without her. No man in England could be less likely
to throw himself off the Monument or to blow out his brains. But he
felt numbed in all the joints of his mind by this sorrow. He could not
make one thing bear upon another, so as to console himself after any
fashion. There was but one thing for him;--to persevere till he got her,
or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as
he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only,
like a crippled man.

He felt almost sure in his heart of hearts that the girl loved that
other younger man. That she had never owned to such love he was quite
sure. The man himself and Henrietta also had both assured him on this
point, and he was a man easily satisfied by words and prone to
believe. But he knew that Paul Montague was attached to her, and that
it was Paul's intention to cling to his love. Sorrowfully looking
forward through the vista of future years, he thought he saw that
Henrietta would become Paul's wife. Were it so, what should he do?
Annihilate himself as far as all personal happiness in the world was
concerned, and look solely to their happiness, their prosperity, and
their joys? Be as it were a beneficent old fairy to them, though the
agony of his own disappointment should never depart from him? Should
he do this and be blessed by them,--or should he let Paul Montague know
what deep resentment such ingratitude could produce? When had a father
been kinder to a son, or a brother to a brother, than he had been to
Paul? His home had been the young man's home, and his purse the young
man's purse. What right could the young man have to come upon him just
as he was perfecting his bli