y, at least, I am. To fall frowning will
never do. I had no fall. My gallant Leboo made my heart leap with love of
him, though mill-stones were tied to it. I may be vexed when I begin, but
I soon ride out a bad temper. And he is mine! I am certainly inconstant
to Charles, for I think of Leboo fifty times more. Besides, there is no
engagement as yet between Charles and me. I have first to be approved
worthy by Mr. and Miss Pollingray: two pairs of eyes and ears, over which
I see a solemnly downy owl sitting, conning their reports of me. It is a
very unkind ordeal to subject any inexperienced young woman to. It was
harshly conceived and it is being remorselessly executed. I would
complain more loudly--in shrieks--if I could say I was unhappy; but every
night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the long falls
of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods seeming to
enclose the house from harm: I dream of the old inhabitant, his
ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the wildflowers
have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung there. And
I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.

CHAPTER V

HE

For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest
woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have
worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle. I
have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith. And I have,
as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those twenty
years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly useless,
fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other follies.
But it was a folly in itself. Can one's nature be too stedfast? The
question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a safeguard has
often risen before me. The truth, I must learn to think, is, that my
mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental apprehension
and native tenacity of attachment. I have fallen into one of the pits of
a well-meaning but idle man. The world discredits the existence of pure
platonism in love. I myself can barely look back on those twenty years of
amatory servility with a full comprehension of the part I have been
playing in them. And yet I would not willingly forfeit the exalted
admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as I would
have imperilled her purity. I cling to the past as to something in which
I have dese