"But--you have the triumph; see, I am still alone! I sought the world of the young--the marriage mart of the Beautiful once more. Alas! if my eye was captured for a moment, it was by something that reminded me of you. I saw a faultless face, radiant with its virgin blush; moved to it, I drew near-sighing, turned away; it was not you! I heard the silvery laugh of a life fresh as an April morn. 'Hark!' I said, 'is not that the sweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled? Listening, I forgot my weight of years. Why? because listening, I remembered you. 'Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh,' whispered Prudence. 'Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own.' Mind! O frigid pedantry! Mind!--had not yours been a volume open to my eyes; in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to human sense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!--wed another! 'Hush,' I said, 'it shall be. Eighteen years since we parted-- seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her again, the very change that time must have brought will cure. I saw you--all the past rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled--never more to dream that I can shake off the curse of memory--blent with each drop of my blood-- woven with each tissue-throbbing in each nerve-bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh--poison-root from which every thought buds to wither--the curse to have loved and to have trusted you!" "Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?" cried Caroline, clasping her hands to her bosom." And is my sin so great--is it so unpardonable? Oh, if in a heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honour to inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only--only--as a curse! Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me. Call it hate--it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives, can I never, never again--never, now that I know I am less unworthy of you by the very anguish I feel to have so stung you--can I never again be the Caroline of old?"