Page:The Talisman.pdf/49

Rh heart. His slightest wish was invariably accomplished; but at every wish the skin of shagreen diminished, and with it he felt his health and strength decline. He found he had but one reserve—to desire nothing. Gradually his splendid abode became a solitude, and his habits those of an ascetic. He ate before he was hungry, lest he should wish for food; he slept with his night-draught drugged with laudanum, lest he should crave repose. Once, and once only, he met Laura. He turned from her with loathing: was not she the cause of his present doom? Mrs. Herbert marked his avoidance with a sweet laugh and a stinging jest:—"So much for a romantic attachment! My poet-lover has not a guinea in the world, and he vows eternal constancy aux beaux yeux de ma cassette. He becomes a millionaire, and nous avons changé tout cela—the passionate and the elevated degenerates into the indifferent and the calculating. Never tell me of disinterested love!" There was perhaps some bitterness in this; but when was a woman ever witty without being bitter? Think for a moment how her feelings must have been frozen before they could sparkle, and how their edge must have been ground down before they became so keen: brilliant and caustic words are but the outward type of that which is within. "I will consult a physician to-morrow," said Charles Smythe one night, after he had spent about an hour in gazing alternately on his pale