back to the dolce
far niente,--to friends few, but intimate; to life monotonous, but
unrestrained; and even there the sense of loneliness will again
seize upon you; and you do not seek, as I do, the annihilation of
memory,--your dead passions are turned to ghosts that haunt you, and
unfit you for the living world. I see it all,--I see it still, in your
hurried fantastic lines, as I saw it when we two sat amidst the pines
and beheld the blue lake stretched below, I troubled by the shadow of
the Future, you disturbed by that of the Past.

Well, but you say, half seriously, half in jest, "I will escape from
this prison-house of memory; I will form new ties, like other men, and
before it be too late; I will marry. Ay, but I must love,--there is the
difficulty." Difficulty,--yes, and Heaven be thanked for it! Recall all
the unhappy marriages that have come to your knowledge: pray, have not
eighteen out of twenty been marriages for Love? It always has been so,
and it always will; because, whenever we love deeply, we exact so much
and forgive so little. Be content to find some one with whom your hearth
and your honour are safe. You will grow to love what never wounds your
heart, you will soon grow out of love with what must always disappoint
your imagination. Cospetto! I wish my Jemima had a younger sister for
you. Yet it was with a deep groan that I settled myself to a--Jemima.

Now, I have written you a long letter, to prove how little I need
of your compassion or your zeal. Once more let there be long silence
between us. It is not easy for me to correspond with a man of your rank,
and not incur the curious gossip of my still little pool of a world
which the splash of a pebble can break into circles. I must take this
over to a post-town some ten miles off, and drop it into the box by
stealth. Adieu, dear and noble friend, gentlest heart and subtlest fancy
that I have met in my walk through life. Adieu. Write me word when you
have abandoned a day-dream and found a Jemima.

ALPHONSO.

P. S.--For Heaven's sake, caution and recaution your friend the minister
not to drop a word to this woman that may betray my hiding-place.

"Is he really happy?" murmured Harley, as he closed the letter; and he
sank for a few moments into a revery.

"This life in a village, this wife in a lady who puts down her work to
talk about villagers--what a contrast to Audley's full existence! And I
cannot envy nor comprehend eit