agitation. He had received an impression for which he
was unprepared. He had seen for the second time a young girl whom, for
the peace of his own mind, and for the happiness of others, he should
never again have looked upon until Time had taught their young hearts
the lesson which all hearts must learn, sooner or later.

What shall the unfortunate person do who has met with one of those
disappointments, or been betrayed into one of those positions, which
do violence to all the tenderest feelings, blighting the happiness of
youth, and the prospects of after years?

If the person is a young man, he has various resources. He can take to
the philosophic meerschaum, and nicotine himself at brief intervals into
a kind of buzzing and blurry insensibility, until he begins to "color"
at last like the bowl of his own pipe, and even his mind gets the
tobacco flavor. Or he can have recourse to the more suggestive
stimulants, which will dress his future up for him in shining
possibilities that glitter like Masonic regalia, until the morning light
and the waking headache reveal his illusion. Some kind of spiritual
anaesthetic he must have, if he holds his grief fast tied to his
heartstrings. But as grief must be fed with thought, or starve to death,
it is the best plan to keep the mind so busy in other ways that it has
no time to attend to the wants of that ravening passion. To sit down and
passively endure it, is apt to end in putting all the mental machinery
into disorder.

Clement Lindsay had thought that his battle of life was already fought,
and that he had conquered. He believed that he had subdued himself
completely, and that he was ready, without betraying a shadow of
disappointment, to take the insufficient nature which destiny had
assigned him in his companion, and share with it all of his own larger
being it was capable, not of comprehending, but of apprehending.

He had deceived himself. The battle was not fought and won. There
had been a struggle, and what seemed to be a victory, but the
enemy--intrenched in the very citadel of life--had rallied, and would
make another desperate attempt to retrieve his defeat.

The haste with which the young man had quitted the village was only a
proof that he felt his danger. He believed that, if he came into the
presence of Myrtle Hazard for the third time, he should be no longer
master of his feelings. Some explanation must take place between them,
and how was it possible that i