“What should I do?” This was the question that presented itself to my mind, almost every hour of the day. It called energetically for an answer.
I loved Lenore Hyland—I felt that I ever should, as long as life was left me. Such being the case, was it right for me to endeavour to gain the affections of an unsophisticated girl like Jessie H—? Would it be honourable of me to take advantage of that incident—which had no doubt favoured her first inclination towards me? To win her heart, and then forsake her, would be to inflict upon her the same sorrow I was myself suffering for the loss of Lenore.
Lenore was still more dear to me than life; and I had only lived since losing her, because I believed it a crime to die, until some Supreme Power should call me to come. And yet should I ever return to Liverpool, and find Lenore a widow—even though she should wish it—I could never marry her!
“She can never be mine,” thought I. “She never loved me; or she would have waited for my return. Why, then, should I not love Jessie, and make her my wife?”
There are many who would have adopted this alternative; and without thinking there was any wrong in it.
I did, however. I knew that I could never love Jessie, as I had loved Lenore—to whose memory I could not help proving true, notwithstanding that she had abandoned me for another. This feeling on my part may have been folly—to a degree scarce surpassed by my mother’s infatuation for Mr Leary; but to know that a certain course of action is foolish, does not always prevent one from pursuing it.
“Shall I marry Jessie, and become contented—perhaps happy? Or shall I remain single—true to the memory of the lost Lenore—and continue the aimless, wandering, wretched existence I have lately experienced?”
Long and violent was the struggle within my soul, before I could determine upon the answers to these self-asked questions. I knew that I could love Jessie; but never as I should. “Would it be right, then, for me to marry her?” I answered the last question by putting another. “Should I myself wish to have a wife, who loved another man, and yet pretended for me an affection she did not feel?”
I need scarcely say, that this interrogatory received an instantaneous response in the negative. It determined me to separate from Jessie H—, and at once. To remain any longer in her society—to stay even another day under the roof of her father’s house, would be a crime for which I could never forgive myself. To-morrow I should start for Melbourne.
I had been walking on the bank of the river, when these reflections, and the final resolve, passed through my mind. I was turning to go back to the house, when I saw Jessie straying near. She approached me, as if by accident.