There, have I scolded you sufficiently? I should scold you more, if I did not see in the affluence of your youth and your intellect the cause of your restlessness. Riches are always restless. It is only to poverty that the gods give content. You question me about love; you ask if I have ever bowed to a master, ever merged my life in another’s: expect no answer on this from me. Circe herself could give no answer to the simplest maid, who, never having loved, asks, “What is love?” In the history of the passions each human heart is a world in itself; its experience profits no others. In no two lives does love play the same part or bequeath the same record. I know not whether I am glad or sorry that the word “love” now falls on my ear with a sound as slight and as faint as the dropping of a leaf in autumn may fall on thine. I volunteer but this lesson, the wisest I can give, if thou canst understand it: as I bade thee take art into thy life, so learn to look on life itself as an art. Thou couldst discover the charm in Tasso; thou couldst perceive that the requisite of all art, that which pleases, is in the harmony of proportion. We lose sight of beauty if we exaggerate the feature most beautiful. Love proportioned adorns the homeliest existence; love disproportioned deforms the fairest. Alas! wilt thou remember this warning when the time comes in which it may be needed? E----- G-------. BOOK II. CHAPTER I. It is several weeks after the date of the last chapter; the lime-trees in the Tuileries are clothed in green. In a somewhat spacious apartment on the ground-floor in the quiet locality of the Rue d’Anjou, a man was seated, very still and evidently absorbed in deep thought, before a writing-table placed close to the window. Seen thus, there was an expression of great power both of intellect and of character in a face which, in ordinary social commune, might rather be noticeable for an aspect of hardy frankness, suiting well with the clear-cut, handsome profile, and the rich dark auburn hair, waving carelessly over one of those broad open foreheads, which, according to an old writer, seem the “frontispiece of a temple dedicated to Honour.” The forehead, indeed, was the man’s most remarkable feature. It could not but prepossess the beholder. When, in private theatricals, he had need to alter the character of his countenance, he did it effectually, merely by forcing down his hair till it reached his eyebrows. He no longer then looked like the same man. The person I describe has been already introduced to the reader as Graham Vane. But perhaps this is the fit occasion to enter into some such details as to his parentage and position as may make the introduction more satisfactory and complete.