apartment, at their
house not far from the Plain-stones at Aberdeen, while her lesser
sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in
our way.

"How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate?
I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my
misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt
if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing
of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke--it
nearly choked me--to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and
almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my
existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will
puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the
_recollection_ (_not_ the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as
ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or
remember her pitying sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How
very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory--her brown, dark
hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see
_her now_; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least
confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her,
and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than
sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months....

"I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her
marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and
probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well
acquainted with my childish _penchant_, and had sent the news on
purpose for _me_,--and thanks to her!

"Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my
reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus,
others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than
a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign
any cause for this precocity of affection."

Though the chance of his succession to the title of his ancestors was
for some time altogether uncertain--there being, so late as the year
1794, a grandson of the fifth lord still alive--his mother had, from
his very birth, cherished a strong persuasion that he was destined not
only to be a lord, but "a great man." One of the circumstances on
which she founded this belief was, singularly enough, his
lameness;--for what reason it is difficult to conceive, except