When they had passed the wood, however, and were riding on through the open country, Sir Edward Hungerford fell somewhat behind, to talk with a household tailor, whom he entertained, upon the device of a new sort of hose, which he intended to introduce; while Sir William Arden, naturally a taciturn man, rode on by Chartley's side, almost in silence. The young nobleman himself was now very grave. The excitement was over. All that had passed that night belonged to the past. It was a picture hung up in the gallery of memory; and he looked upon the various images it contained as one does upon the portraits of dead friends. He saw Iola, as she had sat beside him at the abbey in gay security. He felt the trembling of her hand upon his arm, in the hour of danger. Her cheek seemed to rest upon his shoulder again, as it had done, when, weary and exhausted, she had slept overpowered by slumber. Her balmy breath seemed once more to fan his cheek. The time since he had first known her was but very short; but yet he felt that it had been too long for him. That, in that brief space, things had been born that die not--new sensations--immortal offspring of the heart--children of fate that live along with us on earth, and go with us to immortality. "She cannot be mine," he thought. "She is plighted to another whom she knows not--loves not." He would fain have recalled those hours. He would fain have wiped out the sensations they had produced. He resolved to try--to think of other things--to forget--to be what he had been before. Vain, vain hopes and expectations! Alas, he sought an impossibility. No one can ever be what he was before. Each act of life changes the man--takes something, gives something--leaves him different from what he was. He may alter; but he cannot go back. What he was is a memory, and never can be a reality again; and more especially is this the case with the light careless heart of youth. Pluck a ripe plum from the tree--touch it as tenderly as you will; the bloom is wiped away; and, try all the arts you can, you can never restore that bloom again, nor give the fruit the hue it had before. Happy those buoyant and successful spirits who can look onward at every step, from life's commencement to its close, and are never called upon to sit down by the weary way side of being, and long for the fair fields and meadows they have passed, never to behold again. CHAPTER XIX.