to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life.  But, what are fifty years?  They mark the prime of a healthy man’s existence.  He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more eligible—­to use the cant phrase of gossips—­than a young man, even for a young girl.  And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?

I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot and jealous as General Althorpe.  For, with my thorough knowledge of myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world.  Nor, as I am and know myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble.  When my filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas of her own.  Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed imaginations are desperate things to encounter.  There is nothing beyond their reach.  Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them:  their supernatural vitality has vanished.  I fancy my pretty Alice to be in this state now.  She leaves us to-morrow.  In the autumn we shall have her with us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately.  I desire that they should meet.  It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but, if I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity of dormant compatriotic feeling.  The contemplation of the contrast, too, may save me from both:  like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on either side of him.

CHAPTER VI

SHE

I am at home.  There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home.  It is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that I know them.  They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such petty things.  They complain that I tell them nothing.  What have I to tell?  My Prince! my own Leboo, if I might lie in the stall with you, then I should feel thoroughly happy!  That is, if I could fall asleep.  Evelina declares we are not eight miles from Dayton.  It seems to me I am eight millions of miles distant, and shall be all my life travelling along a weary road to get there again just for one long sunny day.  And it might rain when I got there after all!  My trouble nobody knows.  Nobody knows a thing!

The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to accompany me up to my bedroom.  She spoke to me searchingly about Charles; but she did not demand compromising answers.  She is not in favour of early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon which we stand:  that of friends.  I assured her we were simply friends.  ’It is the firmest basis of an attachment,’ she said; and I did not look hurried.