e which I carried
for ever at my heart like an amulet. Other women might be fair, but my
eyes never sought them; other voices might be sweet, but my ear never
listened to them; other hands might be soft, but my lips never pressed
them. She was the only woman in all my world--the only star in all my
night--the one Eve of my ruined Paradise. In a word, I loved her--loved
her, I think, more dearly than before I lost her.

"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

I had that morning received by post a parcel of London papers and
magazines, which, for a foolish reason of my own, I almost dreaded to
open; so, putting off the evil hour, I thrust the ominous parcel into my
pocket and went out to read it in some green solitude, far away among
the lonely hills and tracts of furzy common that extend for miles and
miles around my native place. It was a delicious autumn morning, bright
and fresh and joyous as spring. The purple heather was all abloom along
the slopes of the hill-sides. The golden sandcliffs glittered in the
sun. The great firwoods reached away over heights and through
valleys--"grand and spiritual trees," pointing ever upward with warning
finger, like the Apostles in the old Italian pictures. Now I passed a
solitary farm-yard where busy laborers were piling the latest stacks;
now met a group of happy children gathering wild nuts and blackberries.
By-and-by, I came upon a great common, with a picturesque mill standing
high against the sky. All around and about stretched a vast prospect of
woodland and tufted heath, bounded far off by a range of chalk-hills
speckled with farm-houses and villages, and melting towards the west
into a distance faint and far, and mystic as the horizon of a Turner.

Here I threw myself on the green turf and rested. Truly, Nature is a
great "physician of souls." The peace of the place descended into my
heart, and hushed for a while the voice of its repinings. The delicious
air, the living silence of the woods, the dreamy influences of the
autumnal sunshine, all alike served to lull me into a pleasant mood,
neither gay nor sad, but very calm--calm enough for the purpose for
which I had come. So I brought out my packet of papers, summoned all my
philosophy to my aid, and met my own name upon the second page. For here
was, as I had antic