encies in which the wisest
man may try to reason himself back from impulse to principle; and try
in vain:--the one when a woman has attracted him for the first time; the
other, when, for the first time, also, she has happened to offend him.

I know not how long I had been walking in the park, thus absorbed yet
not thinking, when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three,
and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with
my sister at two o'clock. It would be nearly half-an-hour more before
I could reach home. Never had any former appointment of mine with Clara
been thus forgotten! Love had not yet turned me selfish, as it turns all
men, and even all women, more or less. I felt both sorrow and shame at
the neglect of which I had been guilty; and hastened homeward.

The groom, looking unutterably weary and discontented, was still leading
my horse up and down before the house. My sister's horse had been sent
back to the stables. I went in; and heard that, after waiting for me an
hour, Clara had gone out with some friends, and would not be back before
dinner.

No one was in the house but the servants. The place looked dull, empty,
inexpressibly miserable to me; the distant roll of carriages along the
surrounding streets had a heavy boding sound; the opening and shutting
of doors in the domestic offices below, startled and irritated me; the
London air seemed denser to breathe than it had ever seemed before.
I walked up and down one of the rooms, fretful and irresolute. Once
I directed my steps towards my study; but retraced them before I had
entered it. Reading or writing was out of the question at that moment.

I felt the secret inclination strengthening within me to return to
Hollyoake Square; to try to see the girl again, or at least to ascertain
who she was. I strove--yes, I can honestly say, strove to repress the
desire. I tried to laugh it off, as idle and ridiculous; to think of my
sister, of the book I was writing, of anything but the one subject that
pressed stronger and stronger on me, the harder I struggled against
it. The spell of the syren was over me. I went out, hypocritically
persuading myself, that I was only animated by a capricious curiosity
to know the girl's name, which once satisfied, would leave me at rest on
the matter, and free to laugh at my own idleness and folly as soon as I
got home again.

I arrived at the house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front
windows,