is something within us which, from the instant we live and move, thirsts after its likeness.  This propensity develops itself with the development of our nature.  The gratification of the senses soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love.  Love, on the contrary, is an universal thirst for a communion, not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative, and sensitive.  He who finds his antitype, enjoys a love perfect and enduring; time cannot change it, distance cannot remove it; the sympathy is complete.  He who loves an object that approaches his antitype, is proportionately happy, the sympathy is feeble or strong, as it may be.  If men were properly educated, and their faculties fully developed,’ continued Herbert, ’the discovery of the antitype would be easy; and, when the day arrives that it is a matter of course, the perfection of civilisation will be attained.’

‘I believe in Plato,’ said Lord Cadurcis, ’and I think I have found my antitype.  His theory accounts for what I never could understand.’

CHAPTER VII.

In the course of the evening Lady Annabel requested Lord Cadurcis and his cousin to take up their quarters at the villa.  Independent of the delight which such an invitation occasioned him, Cadurcis was doubly gratified by its being given by her.  It was indeed her unprompted solicitation; for neither Herbert nor even Venetia, however much they desired the arrangement, was anxious to appear eager for its fulfilment.  Desirous of pleasing her husband and her daughter; a little penitent as to her previous treatment of Cadurcis, now that time and strange events had combined to soften her feelings; and won by his engaging demeanour towards herself, Lady Annabel had of mere impulse resolved upon the act; and she was repaid by the general air of gaiety and content which it diffused through the circle.

Few weeks indeed passed ere her ladyship taught herself even to contemplate the possibility of an union between her daughter and Lord Cadurcis.  The change which had occurred in her own feelings and position had in her estimation removed very considerable barriers to such a result.  It would not become her again to urge the peculiarity of his temperament as an insuperable objection to the marriage; that was out of the question, even if the conscience of Lady Annabel herself, now that she was so happy, were perfectly free from any participation in the causes which occasioned the original estrangement between Herbert and herself.  Desirous too, as all mothers are, that her daughter should be suitably married, Lady Annabel could not shut her eyes to the great improbability of such an event occurring, now that Venetia had, as it were, resigned all connection with her native country.  As to her daughter marrying a foreigner, the very idea was intolerable to her; and Venetia appeared therefore to have resumed that