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64 good feller; but seein' things was as they was, if I'd had means and knowed what I know now, I shouldn't never have married him."

"May-be you'd have married somebody else, though," suggested I.

"Like enough, Miss Clara; girls are unaccountable perverse when they get in love. But do get up and go to bed. A'n't you goin' to the Lake to-morrow?"

That put my speculation to flight. Up I rose and meekly followed Delia to my room; this time she staid to see me fairly disrobed. But I had had sleep enough. I was also quiet; I could think. The future lay at my feet, to be planned and patterned at my will; or so I thought. I had not permitted myself to think much about Harry Tempest, from an instinctive feeling of danger; I did not know then that

I was young, rich, beautiful, independent; I came and went as I would, without question, and did my own pleasure. If I married, all this power must be given up; possibly I and my husband would tire of each other,—and then what remained but fixed and incurable disgust and pain? I thought over my strange dream. Cleopatra, the enchantress, and the scorn of men: that was not love, it was simple passion of the lowest grade. Lady Jane Grey: she was only proper. Marguerite de Valois: profligate. Elizabeth: a shrewish, selfish old politician. Who of all these had loved? Arria: and Pætus dying, she could not love. Lady Russell: she lived and mourned. I looked but at one side of the argument, and drew my inferences from that, but they satisfied me. Soon I saw the dawn stretch its opal tints over the distant hills, and tinge the tree-tops with bloom. I heard the half-articulate music of birds, stirring in their nests; but before the sounds of higher life began to stir I had gone to sleep, firmly resolved to ride to the Lake, and to give Harry Tempest no opportunity to speak to me alone. But I slept too long; it was noon before I woke, and I had sent no message about my preference of the pony, as I promised, to Mr. Tempest. I had only time to breakfast and dress. At three o'clock he came,—with his carriage, of course. So I rode to the Lake!

It's all very well to make up one's mind to say a certain thing; it is better if you say it; but, somehow or other,—I really was ashamed afterward,—I forgot all my good reasons. I found I had taken a great deal of pains to no purpose. In short, after due time, I married Harry Tempest; and though it is some time since that happened, I am still much of Eve's opinion,—

is as absolute an instinct in the human mind for the definite, the palpable, and the emphatic, as there is for the mysterious, the versatile, and the elusive. With some, method is a law, and taste severe in affairs, costume, exercise, social intercourse, and faith. The simplicity, directness, uniformity, and pure emphasis or grace of Sculpture have analogies in literature and character: the terse despatch of a brave soldier, the concentrated dialogue of Alfieri, some proverbs, aphorisms, and poetic lines, that have become household words, puritanic consistency, silent fortitude, are but so many vigorous outlines, and impress us by virtue of the same colorless intensity as a masterpiece of the statuary. How