It was well understood that I was an heiress, and I did not want for adulation. I was surrounded by fashion and beauty, and wreathed with approbation from the noblest and most exalted, on that night of festal splendor; and again that beautiful face that had cast its spell above me in my inexperienced childhood, and that age never seemed to change nor chill, bent above me with its gracious and genial sweetness, and the princely banker on this occasion condescended to manifest his kindly and approving interest in the daughter of his dead friend. At any other time, such tribute would have been most grateful and acceptable to me, for this man was almost my _beau idéal_ at this period, but now the bitterness with which my heart was filled, permeated my whole being, and dashed every draught of enjoyment untasted from my lips.
Yet the memory of that time--that face--returned to me later with emotions irresistible, when the being who was then the idol of society, became its ostracized outcast, and, among all who bowed before him in his pride of place and power, were found, before two years had elapsed from this period,
Already is the injustice of that decision forced on the convictions of his fellow-men. Our scales are not wisely balanced in this world--we cannot weigh motives against acts, thought against deeds, with atom-like precision, nor measure the tempted with the temptation grain by grain, hair by hair. Ambition was the fault of the seraphim in the commencement--be well assured that some of the old angelic leaven lingers still about all of its votaries and victims.
Ay--victims!--for he who was said to have made so many, was himself the victim of the society that spoiled and flattered him, and fostered his foibles, in the beginning, with its false and fawning breath, and, later, blew on him a blast of ice from its remorseless, pestilent jaws, that froze him out of his humanity.
He could not live--moulded, as he was, of all sweet elements--apart from social influences, from the regard, the affection, the approbation of his kind--and he died of heart-starvation; fortunate, indeed, in that he was mercifully permitted so to die, rather than have lived, as less fervent natures might have done, in cold and cheerless apathy.