? "I cannot tell you with how much joy I would take
you back to my bosom!" Ah! that might never be. But yet the assurance
had been sweet to her;--dangerously sweet, as she soon told herself.
She knew that she had lost her Eden, but it was something to her that
the master of the garden had not himself driven her forth. She sat
there, thinking of her fate, as though it belonged to some other
one,--not to herself; as though it were a tale that she had read.
Herself she had shipwrecked altogether; but though she might sink,
she had not been thrust from the ship by hands which she loved.

But would it not have been better that he should have scorned her
and reviled her? Had he been able to do so, he at least would have
escaped the grief of disappointed love. Had he learned to despise
her, he would have ceased to regret her. She had no right to feel
consolation in the fact that his sufferings were equal to her own.
But when she thought of this, she told herself that it could not be
that it was so. He was a man, she said, not passionate by nature.
Alas! it was the mistake she had ever made when summing up the items
of his character! He might be persistent, she thought, in still
striving to do that upon which he had once resolved. He had said
so, and that which he said was always true to the letter. But,
nevertheless, when this thing which he still chose to pursue should
have been put absolutely beyond his reach, he would not allow his
calm bosom to be harassed by a vain regret. He was a man too whole at
every point,--so Alice told herself,--to allow his happiness to be
marred by such an accident.

But must the accident occur? Was there no chance that he might be
saved, even from such trouble as might follow upon such a loss?
Could it not be possible that he might be gratified,--since it would
gratify him,--and that she might be saved! Over and over again she
considered this,--but always as though it were another woman whom she
would fain save, and not herself.

But she knew that her own fate was fixed. She had been mad when she
had done the thing, but the thing was not on that account the less
done. She had been mad when she had trusted herself abroad with
two persons, both of whom, as she had well known, were intent on
wrenching her happiness from out of her grasp. She had been mad when
she had told herself, whilst walking over the Westmoreland fells,
that after all she might as well marry her cousin, since that other
mar