“This letter I despatched, and the chaise that was to have taken me to E---- took me to London, where I made the necessary arrangements with my banker, and whence I departed for a tour of exploration in South America. “It was after two years’ absence that I returned to discover that the account opened in C.’s name had never been drawn upon. And thus ended the story that had opened like an idyll. I have sometimes feared that an unhappy fate must have overtaken this poor foolish girl, and my recollection of her is not unmixed with remorse. But I have reflected that it was more likely her beauty had secured her an advantageous marriage, and that she was unable to avail herself of the provision I had made for her. “I instituted a careful inquiry, in the hope of discovering her fate, but without result. Her parents at B---- were both dead--strange fatality!--and from no other source could I obtain tidings of my poor C. M. Thus ended my brief, broken love-story. It was with a feeling of relief that I told myself it had thus ended; for I could but remember that the course of events might have taken a very different turn, and one for me most embarrassing. “If C. had been a woman of the world, or if she had fallen into the hands of some legal adventurer, I might have found myself fixed with a wife, and bound by a chain not to be broken on this side the grave. As it is, I retain my freedom, and only in my most pensive and sombre hours does the pale shadow of that half-forgotten love arise before me, gently reproachful. “And in these rare intervals of life’s busy conflict, when the press and hurry give pause, and I sit alone in my tent, the words of the poor child’s letter come back to me with a strange significance. _Perhaps some day, when you are growing old and have become weary of all the pleasures upon earth, you will think a little more tenderly of her who thought it a small thing to peril her soul in the hope of giving you happiness._ “Life’s intricate journey has so many crossroads. Who can tell whether he has not sometimes taken the wrong turning? Should I have been happier if I had given G. a legal right to bore me for the remainder of my existence? Happier! For me there is no such possibility. To be happier, a man must first be happy; and happiness is a bright phantom which I have vainly pursued for the last fifteen years. I should at best have been differently miserable. “I am still free, and I meet the lovely Lady V. in that seventh heaven of the great world to which she has contrived to push her way, and she gives me a patronizing smile and a lofty inclination of her beautiful head; and it is tacitly agreed between us that our rambles and picnics beneath the snow-clad hills are to be as the dreams of days that never were.”