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. It is not because we love too little, but
because our love is worthy of each other, that we disdain to make love a
curse! We cannot wrestle against the world, but we may shake hands with
it, and worm the miser out of its treasures. My heart must be ever
yours; my hand must be Miss Cameron's. Money I must have,--my whole
career depends on it. It is literally with me the highwayman's
choice,--money or life." Vargrave paused, and took Caroline's hand.

"I cannot reason with you," said she; "you know the strange empire you
have obtained over me, and, certainly, in spite of all that has passed