"Harriet Wesden was a romantic school-girl--a young woman who knew little of life, or had read the fictions, highly-coloured, concerning it, till she might have belonged to dream-land for the realities about her. She was led away by a senior scholar, too, as romantic as herself, and more designing; and she and I met, talked, corresponded--fell in love with each other." "I deny that." "Patience, Sidney; on my soul we did! I was not a villain, but a man led away by my vanity and this girl's preference for me, and I loved her. I don't say that it was a very true or passionate love; but it _was_ a love, which burned fiercely enough for a time--which would have been purer and better, but for the evil counsellor and false friend who was always with me, to treat life, and love, and honour as a jest." "The man I met at your house?" "No. A man who has died since then--thank God, I was almost adding, for he worked me much evil, and death only freed me from him." "Go on." "When Harriet Wesden and I parted, I believe we truly loved each other. I had assumed a false name at the outset, and had maintained it throughout our strange courtship--fearing the discovery of governesses, and not knowing the character of her to whom my folly had lured me. I was to go abroad at my father's wish, and I left, fully resolving to write to her, and own all, and ask her if she would wait for me. Then came long absence, fresh scenes, new friends, new dissipations, a belief that she would easily forget me, being but a child when I had seen her last; and so the old, old story, varied scarcely from the many that have gone before it. Sidney, she did forget me--did discover that, after all, it was but a fleeting fancy of her own." "No." "I think the next part of my story proves that. I met her again after an absence of a few years, in the streets, near her house in Suffolk Street, whither I had conducted my father to see yours. All my old passion for her revived--but it was a struggle with her to endure my presence at first. Still I was from the old days; I revived in her memory the one romance that had been hers--I had not played a false part therein, and could easily excuse my long silence. I found out the friends whom she visited in the neighbourhood of New Cross; I formed their acquaintance, and met Harriet Wesden more frequently. Her old assertion that she never wished to see me again--that she loved another, whose name she would never confess to me--wavered. I saw it, and, carried away by the impression created, I did my best to win her." "Away from me?--well, you succeeded. She wrote to me at that time, confessing her inability to think of me longer as a lover." "She wrote, not knowing her own mind, I believe. At that time she was disturbed in thought concerning us--she was often cold and repellent to me, and it was difficult to understand her. Well, Sid, throughout all this, I loved her." "Why keep to your false name, then?"