o--I forgive you--I also was once in love,
and with _her_ mother!'

"I did not answer--I let him depart.

"It was a little while after this interview--but I mention it now, for
there is no importance in the quarter from which I heard it--that I
learned some few particulars of Lucy's marriage. There was, and still
is, in the world's gossip, a strange story of a rich, foolish man, awed
as well as gulled by a sharper, and of a girl torn to a church with a
violence so evident that the priest refused the ceremony. But the rite
was afterwards solemnized by special license, in private, and at night.
The pith of that story has truth, and Lucy was at once the heroine and
victim of the romance. Now, then, I turn to somewhat a different strain
in my narrative.

"You, A----, who know so well the habits of a university _life_,
need not be told how singularly monotonous and contemplative it may be
made to a lonely man. The first year I was there, I mixed, as you may
remember, in none of the many circles into which that curious and motley
society is split. My only recreation was in long and companionless
rides; and in the flat and dreary country around our university, the
cheerless aspect of nature fed the idle melancholy at my heart. In the
second year of my college life, I roused myself a little from my
seclusion, and rather by accident than design--you will remember that my
acquaintance was formed among the men considered most able and promising
of our time. In the summer of that year, I resolved to make a bold
effort to harden my mind and conquer its fastidious reserve; and I set
out to travel over the North of England, and the greater part of
Scotland, in the humble character of a pedestrian tourist. Nothing ever
did my character more solid good than that experiment. I was thrown
among a thousand varieties of character; I was continually forced into
bustle and action, and into _providing for myself_--that great and
indelible lesson towards permanent independence of character.

"One evening, in an obscure part of Cumberland, I was seeking a short
cut to a neighbouring village through a gentleman's grounds, in which
there was a public path. Just within sight of the house (which was an
old, desolate building, in the architecture of James the First, with
gable-ends and dingy walls, and deep-sunk, gloomy windows,) I perceived
two ladies at a little distance before me; one seemed in weak and
delicate health, for she walked slowly a