"How I should like to know her!" said Maltravers, with a sudden energy. Legard changed the subject. He spoke of the Carnival, of balls, of masquerades, of operas, of reigning beauties! "Ah," said Maltravers, with a half sigh, "yours is the age for those dazzling pleasures; to me they are 'the twice-told tale.'" Maltravers meant it not, but this remark chafed Legard. He thought it conveyed a sarcasm on the childishness of his own mind or the levity of his pursuits; his colour mounted, as he replied,-- "It is not, I fear, the slight difference of years between us,--it is the difference of intellect you would insinuate; but you should remember all men have not your resources; all men cannot pretend to genius!" "My dear Legard," said Maltravers, kindly, "do not fancy that I could have designed any insinuation half so presumptuous and impertinent. Believe me, I envy you, sincerely and sadly, all those faculties of enjoyment which I have worn away. Oh, how I envy you! for, were they still mine, then--then, indeed, I might hope to mould myself into greater congeniality with the beautiful and the young!" Maltravers paused a moment, and resumed, with a grave smile: "I trust, Legard, that you will be wiser than I have been; that you will gather your roses while it is yet May: and that you will not live to thirty-six, pining for happiness and home, a disappointed and desolate man; till, when your ideal is at last found, you shrink back appalled, to discover that you have lost none of the tendencies to love, but many of the graces by which love is to be allured!" There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words that they went home at once to Legard's sympathies. He felt irresistibly impelled to learn the worst. "Maltravers," said he, in a hurried tone, "it would be an idle compliment to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it is indelicate in me to apply a general remark; and yet--yet I cannot but fancy that I have discovered your secret, and that you are not insensible to the charms of Miss Cameron!" "Legard!" said Maltravers,--and so strong was his fervent attachment to Evelyn, that it swept away all his natural coldness and reserve,--"I tell you plainly and frankly that in my love for Evelyn Cameron lie the last hopes I have in life. I have no thought, no ambition, no sentiment that is not vowed to her. If my love should be unreturned, I may strive to endure the blow, I may mix with the world, I may seem to occupy myself in the aims of others; but my heart will be broken! Let us talk of this no more; you have surprised my secret, though it must have betrayed itself. Learn from me how preternaturally strong, how generally fatal is love deferred to that day when--in the stern growth of all the feelings--love writes itself on granite!" Maltravers, as if impatient of his own weakness, put spurs to his horse, and they rode on rapidly for some time without speaking.