vening of Sir George Dashwood's ball. Since the eventful day
of the election I had never seen Miss Dashwood; therefore, as to what
precise position I might occupy in her favor was a matter of great doubt in
my mind, and great import to my happiness. That I myself loved her, was
a matter of which all the badinage of my friends regarding her made
me painfully conscious; but that, in our relative positions, such an
attachment was all but hopeless, I could not disguise from myself. Young as
I was, I well knew to what a heritage of debt, lawsuit, and difficulty I
was born to succeed. In my own resources and means of advancement I had no
confidence whatever, had even the profession to which I was destined been
more of my choice. I daily felt that it demanded greater exertions, if not
far greater abilities, than I could command, to make success at all likely;
and then, even if such a result were in store, years, at least, must elapse
before it could happen; and where would she then be, and where should I?
Where the ardent affection I now felt and gloried in,--perhaps all the more
for its desperate hopelessness,--when the sanguine and buoyant spirit to
combat with difficulties which youth suggests, and which, later, manhood
refuses, should have passed away? And even if all these survived the toil
and labor of anxious days and painful nights, what of her? Alas, I now
reflected that, although only of my own age, her manner to me had taken all
that tone of superiority and patronage which an elder assumes towards
one younger, and which, in the spirit of protection it proceeds upon,
essentially bars up every inlet to a dearer or warmer feeling,--at least,
when the lady plays the former part. "What, then, is to be done?" thought
I. "Forget her?--but how? How shall I renounce all my plans, and unweave
the web of life I have been spreading around me for many a day, without
that one golden thread that lent it more than half its brilliancy and all
its attraction? But then the alternative is even worse, if I encourage
expectations and nurture hopes never to be realized. Well, we meet
to-night, after a long and eventful absence; let my future fate be ruled by
the results of this meeting. If Lucy Dashwood does care for me, if I can
detect in her manner enough to show me that my affection may meet a return,
the whole effort of my life shall be to make her mine; if not, if my
own feelings be all that I have to depend upon to extort a reciprocal