Gerard left him. He had scarcely been aware of what he was doing when he carried the packet, unopened, unexamined, to his father. He had feared that he might be tempted--to what?--to conceal his mother's vindication? Never! Yet the responsibility sat heavy on him; and, driven by an irresistible impulse, he had resolved to deprive himself of all power of acting basely by giving at once publicity to all that passed. When he had done this, he felt as if he had applied a match to some fatal rocket which would carry destruction to the very temple and shrine of his dearest hopes--to Elizabeth's happiness and life. But the deed was done; he could but shut his eyes and let the mortal ball proceed towards its destined prey. Gerard was young. He aspired to happiness with all the ardour of youth. While we are young we feel as if happiness were the birthright of humanity; after a long and cruel apprenticeship, we disengage ourselves from this illusion--or from (a yet more difficult sacrifice) the realities that produce felicity--for on earth there are such, though they are too often linked with adjuncts that make the purchase of them cost in the end peace of mind and a pure conscience. Thus was it with Gerard. With Elizabeth, winning her love and making her his own, he felt assured of a life of happiness; but to sacrifice his mother's name--the holy task to which he had dedicated himself from childhood--for the sake of obtaining her--it must not be! With this thought came destruction to the fresh-sprung hopes that adorned his existence. Gerard's poetic and tender nature led him to form sweet dreams of joys derived from a union which would be cemented by affection, sympathy, and enthusiastic admiration of the virtues of his companion. In Elizabeth he had beheld the imbodying of all his wishes; in her eyes he had read their accomplishment. Her love for her father had first awakened his love. Her wise, simple, upright train of thinking--the sensibility ennobled by self-command, yet ever ready to spring forth and comfort the unhappy--her generosity--her total abnegation of self--her understanding so just and true, yet tempered with feminine aptitude to adapt itself to the situation and sentiments of others--all these qualities, discovered one by one, and made dear by the friendship she displayed towards him, had opened the hitherto closed gates of the world's only paradise; and now he found that, as the poet says, evil had entered even there--"and the trail of the serpent" marked with slimy poison the fairest and purest of Eden's flowers.[1]