n publishing his learned manuscripts
ever since his death. That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five
years her senior, and stood bald at the altar. Old General Althorpe
married Julia Dahoop, and, but for his preposterous jealousy of her,
might be cited in proof that the ordinary reckonings are not to be a
yoke on the neck of one who earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate,
though late in life. But, what are fifty years? They mark the prime of a
healthy man's existence. He has by that time seen the world, can decide,
and settle, and is virtually more eligible--to use the cant phrase of
gossips--than a young man, even for a young girl. And may not some fair
and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?

I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
and jealous as General Althorpe. For, with my thorough knowledge of
myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered
myself to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world. Nor, as I am and
know myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble.
When my filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly
audacious ideas of her own. Those vivid young feminine perceptions and
untamed imaginations are desperate things to encounter. There is nothing
beyond their reach. Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are
always seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little
help from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they
have once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their
supernatural vitality has vanished. I fancy my pretty Alice to be in
this state now. She leaves us to-morrow. In the autumn we shall have her
with us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately. I desire that
they should meet. It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but, if
I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity of
dormant compatriotic feeling. The contemplation of the contrast, too,
may save me from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on
either side of him.

CHAPTER VI

SHE

I am at home. There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home.
It is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that
I know them. They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such
petty things. They complain that I tell them nothing. What have I to
tell? My Prince! my own Leboo, if I might lie in