lf--conscious adieux, when, with palpitating heart, I veiled her
fair shoulders with the shawl, and felt the soft pressure of her fingers
as I tenderly assisted her to her chair. I went home that night a
love-sick Writer to the Signet. One fairy form was the sole subject of
my dreams, and next morning I woke to the conviction, that without Edith
Bogle earth would be a wilderness, and even the bowers of Paradise damp,
chilly, and uncomfortable.

There is no comfort in looking back upon a period when hope was high and
unchecked. I have met with men who, in their maudlin moments--usually
towards the close of the evening--were actuated by an impulse similar to
that which compelled the Ancient Mariner to renew his wondrous tale: and
I have heard them on such occasions recount the whole circumstances of
their unfortunate wooing, with voices choked by grief, and with tears of
tender imbecility. I have observed, however, that, on the morrow
succeeding such disclosures, these gentlemen have invariably a shy and
sheepish appearance, as though inwardly conscious that they had extended
their confidence too far, and rather dubious as to the sincerity of
their apparent sympathisers. Warned by their example, I hold it neither
profitable nor wise to push my own confessions too far. If Edith gave me
at the outset more encouragement than she ought to have done--if she
systematically led me to believe that I had made an impression upon her
heart--if she honoured me with a preference so marked, that it deceived
not only myself, but others--let the blame be hers. But why should
I go minutely into the courtship of half a year? As difficult, indeed,
and as futile, would it be to describe the alternations of an April
day, made up of sunshine and of shower, of cloud and rainbow and
storm--sometimes mild and hopeful, then ominous of an eve of tempest.
For a long time, I had not the slightest suspicion that I had a rival. I
remarked, indeed, with somewhat of dissatisfaction, that Edith appeared
to listen too complacently to the commonplace flatteries of the officers
who are the habitual haunters of private ball and of public assembly.
She danced too often with Ensign Corkingham, flirted rather openly with
Major Chawser, and certainly had no business whatever to be present at a
military fete and champagne luncheon given at the Castle by these brave
defenders of their country. I was not invited to that fete, and the
circumstance, as I well remember,