Your mind seemed kindred to my own,--inspired with the proper and wise ambition which regards the fools of the world as puppets, as counters, as chessmen.

For myself, a very angel from heaven could not make me give up the great game of life, yield to my enemies, slip from the ladder, unravel the web I have woven! Share my heart, my friendship, my schemes! this is the true and dignified affection that should exist between minds like ours; all the rest is the prejudice of children." "Vargrave, I am ambitious, worldly: I own it; but I could give up all for you!" "You think so, for you do not know the sacrifice.

You see me now apparently rich, in power, courted; and this fate you are willing to share; and this fate you _should_ share, were it the real one I could bestow on you.

But reverse the medal.

Deprived of office, fortune gone, debts pressing, destitution notorious, the ridicule of embarrassments, the disrepute attached to poverty and defeated ambition, an exile in some foreign town on the poor pension to which alone I should be entitled, a mendicant on the public purse; and that, too, so eaten into by demands and debts, that there is not a grocer in the next market-town who would envy the income of the retired minister! Retire, fallen, despised, in the prime of life, in the zenith of my hopes! Suppose that I could bear this for myself, could I bear it for you?
_You_, born to be the ornament of courts! And you could you see me thus--life embittered, career lost--and feel, generous as you are, that your love had entailed on me, on us both, on our children, this miserable lot! Impossible, Caroline! we are too wise for such romance.