“He had once or twice mentioned her in his letters as a beautiful, amiable creature, whose education had been shamefully neglected.  Her kindness to him in his illness and loneliness, added to her natural charms, won his heart, no doubt many a wise man has been caught in that snare.”

“But what base conduct towards you!”

“Not at all, my dear!  My dream had suffused his words with its own coloring,—­that was all.  As soon as reason could make her voice heard, I acquitted him of all blame.  His feelings towards me had been those of a brother,—­no more.”

“But why, then, did he cease to write? why not share his new happiness with so dear a friend?”

“That was not unnatural, after what he had said of the young lady’s deficiencies.  Probably the awkwardness of the thing led him to defer writing from time to time, till he had become so absorbed in his domestic relations and his business, that he had ceased to think of it.  Life’s early dewdrops often exhale in that way, Kate!”

“Then life is a hateful stupidity!”

“Yes; if it could be morning all day, and childhood could outlast our whole lives, it would be very charming.  But life has jewels that don’t exhale, Kate, but sparkle brightest in the hottest sun.  These lie deep in the earth, and to dig them out requires more than a child’s strength of heart and arm.  One must be well inured to toil and weather before he can win these treasures; but when once he wears these in his bosom he doesn’t sigh for dewdrops.”

“Well, let me hear how you were inured.”

“The news of this marriage revealed to me, as by a flash of lightning, my whole inner world of feeling.  When I knew that he was forever lost, I first knew what he had become to me.  The pangs of disappointment, of self-humiliation,—­I hardly know which were the stronger,—­were like poisoned arrows in my heart.  It was my first trouble, and I had to bear it in silence and alone.  Not for worlds would I have had it guessed that I had cherished an unreturned affection, and it would have killed me to hear him blamed.  Towards him I had, in my most secret heart, no emotion of resentment or reproach.  A feeling of dreary loss, of a long, weary life from which all the flowers had vanished, a sort of tender self-pity, filled my heart.  It is not worth while to detail the whole process by which I gradually forced myself out of this miserable state.  One thing helped me much.  As soon as the first bitterness of my heart was passed, I saw clearly that the indulgence of such a sentiment towards one who was now the husband of another could not be innocent.  It must not be merely concealed; it must be torn up, root and branch.  With this steadily before my mind as the central point of my efforts, I worked my way step by step.  First came the removal of the numerous little mementos of those happy days in dreamland, the sight of which softened my heart into weakness and vain regret.  Next I threw aside my favorite