Then falling into a reverie of sweet and unbroken stillness, with her eyes fixed in abstraction on the fire, Venetia reviewed her life from the moment she had known Plantagenet.  Not an incident that had ever occurred to them that did not rise obedient to her magical bidding.  She loved to dwell upon the time when she was the consolation of his sorrows, and when Cherbury was to him a pleasant refuge!  Oh! she felt sure her mother must remember those fond days, and love him as she once did!  She pictured to herself the little Plantagenet of her childhood, so serious and so pensive when alone or with others, yet with her at times so gay and wild, and sarcastic; forebodings all of that deep and brilliant spirit, which had since stirred up the heart of a great nation, and dazzled the fancy of an admiring world.  The change too in their mutual lots was also, to a degree, not free from that sympathy that had ever bound them together.  A train of strange accidents had brought Venetia from her spell-bound seclusion, placed her suddenly in the most brilliant circle of civilisation, and classed her among not the least admired of its favoured members.  And whom had she come to meet?  Whom did she find in this new and splendid life the most courted and considered of its community, crowned as it were with garlands, and perfumed with the incense of a thousand altars?  Her own Plantagenet.  It was passing strange.

The morrow brought the verses from Cadurcis.  They greatly affected her.  The picture of their childhood, and of the singular sympathy of their mutual situations, and the description of her father, called forth her tears; she murmured, however, at the allusion to her other parent.  It was not just, it could not be true.  These verses were not, of course, shown to Lady Annabel.  Would they have been shown, even if they had not contained the allusion?  The question is not perplexing.  Venetia had her secret, and a far deeper one than the mere reception of a poem; all confidence between her and her mother had expired.  Love had stept in, and, before his magic touch, the discipline of a life expired in an instant.

From all this an idea may be formed of the mood in which, during the fortnight before alluded to, Venetia was in the habit of meeting Lord Cadurcis.  During this period not the slightest conversation respecting him had occurred between her mother and herself.  Lady Annabel never mentioned him, and her brow clouded when his name, as was often the case, was introduced.  At the end of this fortnight, it happened that her aunt and mother were out together in the carriage, and had left her in the course of the morning at her uncle’s house.  During this interval, Lord Cadurcis called, and having ascertained, through a garrulous servant, that though his mistress was out, Miss Herbert was in the drawing-room, he immediately took the opportunity of being introduced.  Venetia was not a little surprised at his appearance, and, conscious of her mother’s feelings upon the subject,