“Were the inquiry not impertinent, nor one that would painfully recall the past and probe the breast too deeply, I should feel curious to learn the particulars,” I observed.
“Faith, my dear fellow, I have been, as you properly suspect, the victim of a too sensitive heart, and have suffered accordingly. But here goes to make a clear confession, and give you the leading incidents of my amatory adventures. I omit, of course, skirmishes of love with femmes de chambre, dress-makers, gentlewomen wayfaring in stage-coaches, or encountered gipsying a mile or two from Islington or the Elephant,—appertaining to the corps de ballet, or met with at a conventicle in the afternoon—sheltering in July, under a portico, from a shower, or lost in November, in a fog. I shall pass over all diurnal notices in The Times, beginning with ‘should this meet the eye,’ and affairs transacted by the agency of twopenny postage. But why detain you? Fill, gentlemen—I fear you’ll find the story very long, and, what is worse, very melancholy and affecting.”
CHAPTER XXXVI. CONFESSIONS OF MAJOR FITZMAURICE.
“Say I love ‘many’—well, dear soul, I do;
Rut the bright object of my heart is ‘one
I love a thousand flowers, of every hue,
For all are beautiful, though similar none;
I love a thousand stars, for all are bright,