give my hand where my respect could not follow.  It may be that I thought too much of my own happiness, but I felt that marriage must be for me positive misery or positive happiness, and I feared that if I married a man so lacking in self-control as to become a common drunkard, that when I ceased to love and respect him, I should be constantly tempted to hate and despise him.  I think one of the saddest fates that can befall a woman is to be tied for life to a miserable bloated wreck of humanity.  There may be some women with broad generous hearts, and great charity, strong enough to lift such men out of the depths, but I had no such faith in my strength and so I gave him back his ring.  He accepted it, but we parted as friends.  For awhile after our engagement was broken, we occasionally met at the houses of our mutual friends in social gatherings and I noticed with intense satisfaction that whenever wine was offered he scrupulously abstained from ever tasting a drop, though I think at times his self-control was severely tested.  Oh! what hope revived in my heart.  Here I said to myself is compensation for all I have suffered, if by it he shall be restored to manhood usefulness and society, and learn to make his life not a thing of careless ease and sensuous indulgence, but of noble struggle and high and holy endeavor.  But while I was picturing out for him a magnificent future, imagining the lofty triumphs of his intellect—­an intellect grand in its achievements and glorious in its possibilities, my beautiful daydream was rudely broken up, and vanished away like the rays of sunset mingling with the shadows of night.  My Aunt Mrs. Roland, celebrated her silver-wedding and my cousin’s birth-day by giving a large entertainment; and among other things she had a plentiful supply of wine.  Mr. Romaine had lately made the acquaintance of my cousin Jeanette Roland.  She was both beautiful in person and fascinating in her manners, and thoughtlessly she held a glass of wine in her hand and asked Mr. Romaine if he would not honor the occasion, by drinking her mother’s health.  For a moment he hesitated, his cheek paled and flushed alternately, he looked irresolute.  While I watched him in silent anguish it seemed as if the agony of years was compressed in a few moments.  I tried to catch his eye but failed, and with a slight tremor in his hand he lifted the glass to his lips and drank.  I do not think I would have felt greater anguish had I seen him suddenly drowned in sight of land.  Oh!  Mr. Clifford that night comes before me so vividly, it seems as if I am living it all over again.  I do not think Mr. Romaine has ever recovered from the reawakening of his appetite.  He has since married Jeanette.  I meet her occasionally.  She has a beautiful home, dresses magnificently, and has a retinue of servants; and yet I fancy she is not happy.  That somewhere hidden out of sight there is a worm eating at the core of her life.  She has a way of dropping her eyes and an absent look about her that I do not fully understand, but it seems to me that I miss the old elasticity of her spirits, the merry ring of her voice, the pleasant thrills of girlish laughter, and though she never confesses it to me I doubt that Jeanette is happy.  And with this sad experience in the past can you blame me if I am slow, very slow to let the broken tendrils of my heart entwine again?”