The Stevenses had gone to live in a remote part of England—­Yorkshire, I believe—­and it thus fell out, that, till his cousin Lucy arrived at her new home, he had not seen her for more than ten years.  The pale, and somewhat plain child, as he had esteemed her, he was startled to find had become a charming woman; and her naturally gay and joyous temperament, quick talents, and fresh young beauty, rapidly acquired an overwhelming influence over him.  Strenuously, but vainly, he struggled against the growing infatuation—­argued, reasoned with himself—­passed in review the insurmountable objections to such a union, the difference of age—­he, leading towards thirty-seven, she, barely twenty-one:  he, crooked, deformed, of reserved, taciturn temper—­she, full of young life, and grace, and beauty.  It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle, when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily’s invitation to pass two or three months with her.  This brought the affair to a crisis.  Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand.  She was not in the apartment, but her opened writing-desk, and a partly-finished letter lying on it, showed that she had been recently there, and would probably soon return.  Mr. Lisle took two or three agitated turns about the room, one of which brought him close to the writing-desk, and his glance involuntarily fell upon the unfinished letter.  Had a deadly serpent leaped suddenly at his throat, the shock could not have been greater.  At the head of the sheet of paper was a clever pen-and-ink sketch of Lucy Stevens and himself—­he, kneeling to her in a lovelorn, ludicrous attitude, and she, laughing immoderately at his lachrymose and pitiful aspect and speech.  The letter was addressed to her sister Emily; and the enraged lover saw not only that his supposed secret was fully known, but that he himself was mocked, laughed at, for his doting folly.  At least this was his interpretation of the words which swam before his eyes.  At the instant Lucy returned, and a torrent of imprecation burst from the furious man, in which wounded self-love, rageful pride, and long pent-up passion, found utterance in wild and bitter words.  Half an hour afterwards Lucy Stevens had left the merchant’s house—­for ever, as it proved.  She, indeed, on arriving at her sister’s, sent a letter, supplicating forgiveness for the thoughtless, and, as he deemed it, insulting sketch, intended only for Emily’s eye; but he replied merely by a note written by one of his clerks, informing Miss Stevens that Mr. Lisle declined any further correspondence with her.