’The sort of young people who have such wonderful command of themselves are not the pleasantest.’

‘No,’ he said; ‘they disappoint us.  We expect folly from the young.’

I shut my lips.  Prince Leboo knew that he must go, and a good gallop reconciled me to circumstances.  Then I was put to jumping little furzes and ditches, which one cannot pretend to do without a fair appearance of gaiety; for, while you are running the risk of a tumble, you are compelled to look cheerful and gay, at least, I am.  To fall frowning will never do.  I had no fall.  My gallant Leboo made my heart leap with love of him, though mill-stones were tied to it.  I may be vexed when I begin, but I soon ride out a bad temper.  And he is mine!  I am certainly inconstant to Charles, for I think of Leboo fifty times more.  Besides, there is no engagement as yet between Charles and me.  I have first to be approved worthy by Mr. and Miss Pollingray:  two pairs of eyes and ears, over which I see a solemnly downy owl sitting, conning their reports of me.  It is a very unkind ordeal to subject any inexperienced young woman to.  It was harshly conceived and it is being remorselessly executed.  I would complain more loudly—­in shrieks—­if I could say I was unhappy; but every night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the long falls of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods seeming to enclose the house from harm:  I dream of the old inhabitant, his ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the wildflowers have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung there.  And I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.

CHAPTER V

HE

For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest woman that ever drew breath.  I have submitted to her whims, I have worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle.  I have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith.  And I have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other follies.  But it was a folly in itself.  Can one’s nature be too stedfast?  The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a safeguard has often risen before me.  The truth, I must learn to think, is, that my mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental apprehension and native tenacity of attachment.  I have fallen into one of the pits of a well-meaning but idle man.  The world discredits the existence of pure platonism in love.  I myself can barely look back on those twenty years of amatory servility with a full comprehension of the part I have been playing in them.  And yet I would not willingly forfeit the exalted admiration of Louise for my constancy:  as little willingly as I would have imperilled her purity.  I cling