t?--and was it not generous of him to remind me then?

"I saw you loved me, and the great joy of that knowledge made me forget
prudence, reason, everything. Afterwards, when alone, I tried to
justify to myself what I had done, and partially succeeded. I argued
that we were young and could wait; I dreamed, too, that my ardor could
outrun time, and grasp in youth the rewards of mature life. In that
hope I left you.

"Since then my views have greatly changed. I have seen something--not
much, it is true--of men and of life, and have found that it is an easy
thing to dream of success, but a long and difficult task to achieve it.
That I have talent it would be affectation to deny; but many a poor and
struggling lawyer is my equal. The best I can hope for, Juanita, is a
youth of severe toil and griping penury, with, perhaps, late in
life,--almost too late to enjoy it,--competence and an honorable name.
And even that is by no means secure; the labor and the poverty may last
my life long.

"You have been reared in the enjoyment of every luxury which wealth can
command. How could you bear to suffer privations, to perform menial
labors, to be stinted in dress, deprived of congenial society, obliged
to refrain from every amusement, because you were unable to afford the
expense? How should you like to have a grinding economy continually
pressing upon you, in every arrangement of your household, every detail
of your daily life? to have your best days pass in petty cares and
sayings, all your intellect expended in the effort to make your paltry
means do the greatest possible service?"

It was not a pleasant picture, but, harshly drawn as it was, I felt in
the fulness of my love that I could do all that, and more, for him. Oh,
yes! for him and with him I would have accepted any servitude, any
suffering. Yet a secret something withheld me from saying so; and how
glad I soon was that I had kept silence!

"You make no reply, Juanita," he said. "Well, I might put on a pretence
of disinterestedness, and say that I was unwilling to bind you to such
a fate, and therefore released you from your engagement. It would not
be altogether a pretence, for nothing could be more painful to me than
to see the brightness of your youth fading away in the life I have
described. But I think of myself, too; comforts, luxuries, indulgences,
I value highly. Since my father's death I have tasted enough of poverty
to know something of its bitterness; and to