Weeks, months, years passed, but she never sought him; and he so far forgot her by ceasing to think of her, that at length, when a chance bubble did rise from the drowned memory, it broke instantly and vanished.  As to the child, he had almost forgotten whether it was a boy or a girl.

But since, in his new desolation, he discovered her, beyond a doubt, in the little Amanda, old memories had been crowding back upon his heart, and he had begun to perceive how Amanda’s mother must have felt when she saw his love decaying visibly before her, and to suspect that it was in the self-immolation of love that she had left him.  His own character had been hitherto so uniformly pervaded with a refined selfishness as to afford no standpoint of a different soil, whence by contrast to recognize the true nature of the rest; but now it began to reveal itself to his conscious judgment.  And at last it struck him that twice he had been left—­by women whom he loved—­at least by women who loved him.  Two women had trusted him utterly, and he had failed them both!  Next followed the thought stinging him to the heart, that the former was the purer of the two; that the one on whom he had looked down because of her lack of education, and her familiarity with humble things and simple forms of life, knew nothing of what men count evil, while she in whom he had worshiped refinement, intellect, culture, beauty, song—­she who, in love-teachableness had received his doctrine against all the prejudices of her education, was—­what she had confessed herself!

But, against all reason and logic, the result of this comparison was, that Juliet returned fresh to his imagination in all the first witchery of her loveliness; and presently he found himself for the first time making excuses for her; if she had deceived him she had deceived him from love; whatever her past, she had been true to him, and was, from the moment she loved him, incapable of wrong.—­He had cast her from him, and she had sought refuge in the arms of the only rival he ever would have had to fear—­the bare-ribbed Death!

Naturally followed the reflection—­what was he to demand purity of any woman?—­Had he not accepted—­yes, tempted, enticed from the woman who preceded her, the sacrifice of one of the wings of her soul on the altar of his selfishness! then driven her from him, thus maimed and helpless, to the mercy of the rude blasts of the world!  She, not he ever, had been the noble one, the bountiful giver, the victim of shameless ingratitude.  Flattering himself that misery would drive her back to him, he had not made a single effort to find her, or mourned that he could never make up to her for the wrongs he had done her.  He had not even hoped for a future in which he might humble himself before her!  What room was there here to talk of honor!  If she had not sunk to the streets it was through her own virtue, and none of his care!  And now she was dead! and his child, but for the charity of a despised superstition, would have been left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the old-faced weakling of a London workhouse!