CHAPTER XIX.
A Bitter-Sweet Reunion.
He travelled.
He realised the melancholy associated[315] with packet-boats, the chill one feels on waking up under tents, the dizzy effect of landscapes and ruins, and the bitterness of ruptured sympathies.
He returned home.
He mingled in society, and he conceived attachments to other women. But the constant recollection of his first love made these appear insipid; and besides the vehemence of desire, the bloom of the sensation had vanished. In like manner, his intellectual ambitions had grown weaker. Years passed; and he was forced to support the burthen of a life in which his mind was unoccupied and his heart devoid of energy.
Towards the end of March, 1867, just as it was getting dark, one evening, he was sitting all alone in his study, when a
