nd locks her up crying in the schoolroom. The parting
is heart-breaking; but, when she has married the banker and had eight
children, and he has become, it may be, a prosperous barrister,--it may
be, a seedy raff who has gone twice or thrice into the Gazette; when,
I say, in after years Strephon and Delia meet again, is not the meeting
ridiculous? Nevertheless, I hope no young man will fall in love, having
any doubt in his mind as to the eternity of his passion. 'Tis when a
man has had a second or third amorous attack that he begins to grow
doubtful; but some women are romantic to the end, and from eighteen to
eight-and-fifty (for what I know) are always expecting their hearts to
break. In fine, when you have been in love and are so no more, when the
King of France, with twenty thousand men, with colours flying, music
playing, and all the pomp of war, having marched up the hill, then
proceeds to march down again, he and you are in an absurd position.

This is what Harry Warrington, no doubt, felt when he went to Kensington
and encountered the melancholy, reproachful eyes of his cousin. Yes! it
is a foolish position to be in; but it is also melancholy to look into
a house you have once lived in, and see black casements and emptiness
where once shone the fires of welcome. Melancholy? Yes; but, ha! how
bitter, how melancholy, how absurd to look up as you pass sentimentally
by No. 13, and see somebody else grinning out of window, and evidently
on the best terms with the landlady. I always feel hurt, even at an inn
which I frequent, if I see other folks' trunks and boots at the doors
of the rooms which were once mine. Have those boots lolled on the sofa
which once I reclined on? I kick you from before me, you muddy, vulgar
highlows!

So considering that his period of occupation was over, and Maria's
rooms, if not given up to a new tenant, were, at any rate, to let, Harry
did not feel very easy in his cousin's company, nor she possibly in his.
He found either that he had nothing to say to her, or that what she had
to say to him was rather dull and commonplace, and that the red lip of
a white-necked pipe of Virginia was decidedly more agreeable to him now
than Maria's softest accents and most melancholy moue. When George went
to Kensington, then, Harry did not care much about going, and pleaded
other engagements.

At his uncle's house in Hill Street the poor lad was no better amused,
and, indeed, was treated by the virtuous