She found Lady Emily there with a paper in her hand.  “Lend me your ears, Mary,” cried she, “while I read these lines to you.  Don’t be afraid, there are no secrets in them, or at least none that you or I will be a whit the wiser for, as they are truly in a most mystic strain.  I found them lying upon this table, and they are in Frederick’s handwriting, for I see he affects the soupirant at present; and it seems there has been a sort of a sentimental farce acted between Adelaide and him.  He pretends that, although distractedly in love with her, he is not so selfish as even to wish her to marry him in preference to the Duke of Altamont; and Adelaide, not to be outdone in heroics, has also made it out that it is the height of virtue in her to espouse the Duke of Altamont, and sacrifice all the tenderest affections of her heart to duty!  Duty! yes, the duty of being a Duchess, and of living in state and splendour with the man she secretly despises, to the pleasure of renouncing both for the man she loves; and so they have parted, and here, I suppose, are Lindore’s lucubrations upon it, intended as a souvenir for Adelaide, I presume.  Now, night visions befriend me!

    “The time returns when o’er my wilder’d mind,
    A thraldom came which did each sense enshroud;
    Not that I bowed in willing chain confined,
    But that a soften’d atmosphere of cloud
    Veiled every sense—­conceal’d th’ impending doom. 
    ’Twas mystic night, and I seem’d borne along
    By pleasing dread—­and in a doubtful gloom,
    Where fragrant incense and the sound of song,
    And all fair things we dream of, floated by,
    Lulling my fancy like a cradled child,
    Till that the dear and guileless treachery,
    Made me the wretch I am—­so lost, so wild—­
    A mingled feeling, neither joy or grief,
    Dwelt in my heart—­I knew not whence it came,
    And—­but that woe is me! ’twas passing brief,
    Even at this hour I fain would feel the same! 
    I track’d a path of flowers—­but flowers among
    Were hissing serpents and drear birds of night,
    That shot across and scared with boding cries;
    And yet deep interest lurked in that affright,
    Something endearing in those mysteries,
    Which bade me still the desperate joy pursue,
    Heedless of what might come—­when from mine eyes
    The cloud should pass, or what might then accrue. 
    The cloud has passed—­the blissful power is flown,
    The flowers are wither’d—­wither’d all the scene. 
    But ah! the dear delusions I have known
    Are present still, with loved though altered mien: 
    I tread the selfsame path in heart unchanged;
    But changed now is all that path to me,
    For where ’mong flowers and fountains once I ranged
    Are barren rocks and savage scenery!”

Mary felt it was in vain to attempt to win her sister’s confidence, and she was too delicate to seek to wrest her secrets from her; she therefore took no notice of this effusion of love and disappointment, which she concluded it to be.