“‘That Lucy is married!’

“‘Married!’ and as that word left my lips, it seemed as if my very life, my very soul, had gushed forth also in the sound.  When—­oh! when, in the night-watch and the daily yearning, when, whatever might have been my grief or wretchedness, or despondency, when had I dreamt, when imaged forth even the outline of a doom like this?  Married! my Lucy, my fond, my constant, my pure-hearted, and tender Lucy!  Suddenly, all the chilled and revolted energies of my passions seemed to re-act, and rush back upon me.  I seized that smiling and hollow wretch with a fierce grasp.  ’You have done this—­you have broken her heart—­you have crushed mine!  I curse you in her name and my own!—­I curse you from the bottom and with all the venom of my soul!—­Wretch! wretch! and he was as a reed in my hands.’

“‘Madman,’ said he, as at last he extricated himself from my gripe, ’my daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to make her happy than you.  Go, go—­I forgive you—­I also was once in love, and with her mother!’

“I did not answer—­I let him depart.

“It was a little while after this interview—­but I mention it now, for there is no importance in the quarter from which I heard it—­that I learned some few particulars of Lucy’s marriage.  There was, and still is, in the world’s gossip, a strange story of a rich, foolish man, awed as well as gulled by a sharper, and of a girl torn to a church with a violence so evident that the priest refused the ceremony.  But the rite was afterwards solemnized by special license, in private, and at night.  The pith of that story has truth, and Lucy was at once the heroine and victim of the romance.  Now, then, I turn to somewhat a different strain in my narrative.

“You, A——­, who know so well the habits of a university life, need not be told how singularly monotonous and contemplative it may be made to a lonely man.  The first year I was there, I mixed, as you may remember, in none of the many circles into which that curious and motley society is split.  My only recreation was in long and companionless rides; and in the flat and dreary country around our university, the cheerless aspect of nature fed the idle melancholy at my heart.  In the second year of my college life, I roused myself a little from my seclusion, and rather by accident than design—­you will remember that my acquaintance was formed among the men considered most able and promising of our time.  In the summer of that year, I resolved to make a bold effort to harden my mind and conquer its fastidious reserve; and I set out to travel over the North of England, and the greater part of Scotland, in the humble character of a pedestrian tourist.  Nothing ever did my character more solid good than that experiment.  I was thrown among a thousand varieties of character; I was continually forced into bustle and action, and into providing for myself—­that great and indelible lesson towards permanent independence of character.