“She sprang upon a bench, and, I swear to you, I thought she was going down!  I was so exalted by this passionate demonstration, that I should certainly have gone over with her, and felt perfectly content to die in her arms,—­at least, until I began to realize what a very disagreeable bath we had chosen to drown in.

“I drew her away; I walked up and down with that superb creature panting and palpitating almost upon my heart; I poured into her ear I know not what extravagant vows; and before the slow-handed sailors had fastened their cable to the buoy in the channel, we had knotted a more subtile and difficult noose, not to be so easily undone!

“Now see what strange, variable fools we are!  Months of tender intercourse had failed to bring about anything like a positive engagement between Margaret and myself; and here behold me irrevocably pledged to Flora, after a brief ten-days’ acquaintance!

“Six mortal hours were exhausted in making the steamer fast,—­in sending off her Majesty’s mails, of which the cockney speaks with a tone of reverence altogether disgusting to us free-minded Yankees,—­and in entertaining the custom-house inspectors, who paid a long and tedious visit to the saloon and our luggage.  Then we were suffered to land, and enter the noisy, solid streets of Liverpool, amid the donkeys and beggars and quaint scenes which strike the American so oddly upon a first visit.  All this delay, the weariness and impatience, the contrast between the morning and the hard, grim reality of mid-day, brought me down from my elevation.  I felt alarmed to think of what had passed.  I seemed to have been doing some wild, unadvised act in a fit of intoxication.  Margaret came up before me, sad, silent, reproachful; and as I gazed upon Flora’s bedimmed face, I wondered how I had been so charmed.

“We took the first train for London, where we arrived at midnight.  Two weeks in that vast Babel,—­then, ho! for Paris!  Twelve hours by rail and steamer carried us out of John Bull’s dominions into the brilliant metropolis of his French neighbor.  Joseph accompanied us, and wrote letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make Margaret writhe.  I had not found it so easy to forget her as I had supposed it would be.  Flora’s power over me was sovereign; but when I was weary of the dazzle and whirl of the life she led me,—­when I looked into the depths of my heart, and saw what the thin film of passion and pleasure concealed,—­in those serious moments which would come, and my soul put stern questions to me,—­then, Sir,—­then—­Margaret had her revenge.

“A month, crowded and glittering with novelty and incident, preceded our departure for Switzerland.  I accompanied Flora’s party; Joseph remained behind.  We left Paris about the middle of June, and returned in September.  I have no words to speak of that era in my life.  I saw, enjoyed, suffered, learned so much!  Flora was always glad, magnificent, irresistible.  But, as I knew her longer, my moments of misgiving became more frequent and profound.  If I had aspired to nothing higher than a life of sensuous delights, she would have been all I could wish.  But——­