The affections may not be so easily wounded as
the passions, but their hurts are deeper, and more lasting. He was now a
solitary man, and the heart within him was dreary and lonesome.
He was not the less alone for having spent so many years in seclusion
and retirement. This was no better preparation than a round of social
cheerfulness: perhaps it even increased the keenness of his sensibility.
He had been so dependent upon her for companionship and love; she had
come to be so much a part and parcel of his existence; they had had so
many cares and thoughts in common, which no one else had shared; that
losing her was beginning life anew, and being required to summon up the
hope and elasticity of youth, amid the doubts, distrusts, and weakened
energies of age.
The effort he had made to part from her with seeming cheerfulness and
hope--and they had parted only yesterday--left him the more depressed.
With these feelings, he was about to revisit London for the last time,
and look once more upon the walls of their old home, before turning his
back upon it, for ever.
The journey was a very different one, in those days, from what the
present generation find it; but it came to an end, as the longest
journey will, and he stood again in the streets of the metropolis.
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