'
"'Madman,' said he, as at last he extricated himself from my gripe, 'my
daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to
make her happy than you. Go, go--I forgive you--I also was once in love,
and with _her_ mother!'
"I did not answer--I let him depart.
"It was a little while after this interview--but I mention it now, for
there is no importance in the quarter from which I heard it--that I
learned some few particulars of Lucy's marriage. There was, and still
is, in the world's gossip, a strange story of a rich, foolish man, awed
as well as gulled by a sharper, and of a girl torn to a church with a
violence so evident that the priest refused the ceremony. But the rite
was afterwards solemnized by special license, in private, and at night.
The pith of that story has truth, and Lucy was at once the heroine and
victim of the romance. Now, then, I turn to somewhat a different strain
in my narrative.
"You, A----, who know so well the habits of a university _life_,
need not be told how singularly monotonous and contemplative it may be
made to a lonely man. The first year I was there, I mixed, as you may
remember, in none of the many circles into which that curious and motley
society is split.
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