I was not an ungenerous though a vain man; but my generosity was wayward, tainted, and imperfect.

I could have borne the separation; I could have severed myself from her; I could have flown to the uttermost parts of the earth; I could have hoarded there my secret yet unextinguished love, and never disturbed her quiet by a murmur: but then the fiat of separation must have come from me! My vanity could not bear that her lips should reject me, that my part was not to be the nobility of sacrifice, but the submission of resignation.

However, my better feelings were aroused, and though I could not stifle I concealed my selfish repinings.

We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my ominous and guilty love.
But I was then too closely bound to the world not to be perpetually reminded of its events.

My retreat was thronged with occasional migrators from London; my books were mingled with the news and scandal of the day.