‘I am convinced that had any one at that time hinted to her that I was to inherit the O’Shea estates, he would have dealt a most dangerous blow to her affection for me. The romance of that unknown future had a great share in our compact. And then we were so serious about it all--the very gravity it impressed being an ecstasy to our young hearts in the thought of self-importance and responsibility. Nor were we without our little tiffs--those lovers’ quarrels that reveal what a terrible civil war can rage within the heart that rebels against itself. I know the very spot where we quarrelled; I could point to the miles of way we walked side by side without a word; and oh! was it not on that very bed I have passed the night sobbing till I thought my heart would break, all because I had not fallen at her feet and begged her forgiveness ere we parted? Not that she was without her self-accusings too; for I remember one way in which she expressed sorrow for having done me wrong was to send me a shower of rose-leaves from her little terraced garden; and as they fell in shoals across my window, what a balm and bliss they shed over my heart! Would I not give every hope I have to bring it all back again? to live it over once more--to lie at her feet in the grass, affecting to read to her, but really watching her long black lashes as they rested on her cheek, or that quivering lip as it trembled with emotion. How I used to detest that work which employed the blue-veined hand I loved to hold within my own, kissing it at every pause in the reading, or whenever I could pretext a reason to question her! And now, here I am in the self-same place, amidst the same scenes and objects. Nothing changed but _herself_! She, however, will remember nothing of the past, or if she does, it is with repugnance and regret; her manner to me is a sort of cold defiance, not to dare to revive our old intimacy, nor to fancy that I can take up our acquaintanceship from the past. I almost fancied she looked resentfully at the Greek girl for the freedom to which she admitted me--not but there was in the other’s coquetry the very stamp of that levity other women are so ready to take offence at; in fact, it constitutes amongst women exactly the same sort of outrage, the same breach of honour and loyalty, as cheating at play does amongst men, and the offenders are as much socially outlawed in one case as in the other. I wonder, am I what is called falling in love with the Greek--that is, I wonder, have the charms of her astonishing beauty and the grace of her manner, and the thousand seductions of her voice, her gestures, and her walk, above all, so captivated me that I do not want to go back on the past, and may hope soon to repay Miss Kate Kearney by an indifference the equal of her own? I don’t think so. Indeed, I feel that even when Nina was interesting me most, I was stealing secret glances towards Kate, and cursing that fellow Walpole for the way he was engaging her attention.