CHAPTER XXIV.
MY NEW WORLD.
Few are the fragments left of follies past; For worthless things are transient.

Those that last Have in them germs of an eternal spirit, And out of good their permanence inherit.
_Bowring_.
Nor they unblest, Who underneath the world's bright vest With sackcloth tame their aching breast, The sharp-edged cross in jewels hide.
_Keble_.
From eighteen to twenty-four--a long step; and it covers the ground that is generally the brightest and gayest in a woman's life, and the most decisive.

With me it was, in a certain sense, bright and gay; but the deciding events of my life seemed to have been crowded into the year, the story of which has just been told.

Of the six years that came after, there is not much to tell.

My character went on forming itself, no doubt, and interiorly I was growing in one direction or the other; but in external matters, there is not much of interest.
I had "no end of money," so it seemed to me, and to a good many other people, I should think, from the way that they paid me court.