Reader, have you ever lived for weeks and weeks in a place which bored you to death? Have you learned to loathe every tree and shrub and hedge-row in the dreary landscape? Have you shivered up and down the melancholy walks, and yawned through the dull, dark rooms, till you began to think the hour never would arrive that was to restore you once again to liberty and light? And then, when the hour _has_ come at last, have you been able to take your departure without some half-reproachful feeling akin to melancholy--without some slight shade of regret to think that much as you have hated it, you look upon it all now for the _last_ time? Perhaps the sun breaks out and shines upon the old place as you catch your last glimpse. Ah! it never used to shine like that when you could see it from those windows every day; you almost wish your departure had been put off till the morrow; you think if you were back again, the walks would not be so very melancholy, the rooms no longer so dull and gloomy. You sigh because you are leaving it, and wonder at yourself for doing so. It is the same thing with friends, and more especially with those who would fain assume a tenderer title: we never know their value but by their loss.
"If it wasn't for Frank," I began to think, "I really believe I might have been very happy with Cousin John. Of course, it's impossible now; and, as he says himself, he'll never be anything but a cousin to me. Poor John! he's a noble, true-hearted, unselfish, generous fellow."
But to return to my walk. When a lady and gentleman meet each other by appointment, either at the edge of the Serpentine or elsewhere, their conversation is not generally of a nature to be related in detail, nor is it to be presumed that their colloquy would prove as interesting to the general public as to themselves. What I learnt of Frank's private history, his views, feelings, and intentions, on that morning, I may as well give in my own words, suppressing divers interruptions, protestations, and interjections, which, much as they added to its zest, necessarily rather impeded the course of the narrative, and postponed its completion till long after I ought to have been back at luncheon.