Those who in the dazzled vision of youth see only the beauty and splendour of love—first love, who deem it comprises the whole of life, beginning, aim, and end—may marvel that I, who have been young and now am old, see as I saw that night, not only the lover's but the parents' side of the question. I felt overwhelmed with sadness, as, viewing the three, I counted up in all its bearings and consequences, near and remote, this attachment of poor Guy's.
"Well, father," he said at last, guessing by intuition that the father's heart would best understand his own.
"Well, my son," John answered, sadly.
"YOU were young once."
"So I was;" with a tender glance upon the lad's heated and excited countenance. "Do not suppose I cannot feel with you. Still, I wish you had been less precipitate."
"You were little older than I am when you married?"
"But my marriage was rather different from this projected one of yours. I knew your mother well, and she knew me. Both of us had been tried—by trouble which we shared together, by absence, by many and various cares. We chose one another, not hastily or blindly, but with free will and open eyes. No, Guy," he added, speaking earnestly and softly, "mine was no sudden fancy, no frantic passion. I honoured your mother above all women. I loved her as my own soul."
"So do I love Louise. I would die for her any day."
At the son's impetuosity the father smiled; not incredulously, only sadly.
All this while the mother had sat motionless, never uttering a sound. Suddenly, hearing a footstep and a light knock at the door, she darted forward and locked it, crying, in a voice that one could hardly have recognized as hers—