“About me!—­Oh, tell me, Clary, what she said about me.”

“She said,” replied the child, blushing very deeply, and speaking so low that Anthony could only just catch the words, “that she loved you.  That you were the only man she had ever seen that realized her dreams of what man ought to be.  And what she said of you made me love you too, and I felt proud that you were my cousin.”

“Dear amiable Clary,” and the delighted Anthony unconsciously covered the delicate white hand held within his own with passionate kisses.

“You must not take me for Juliet,” and Clary quietly withdrew her hand.  “But I am so glad that you love her, because we shall be able to talk about her.  I have a small portfolio she gave me, full of pretty poems, which I will give to you, for I know all the poems by heart.”

Anthony no longer heard her.  He was wrapt up in a blissful dream, from which he was in no hurry to awaken.  Many voices spake to his soul, but over all, he heard one soft deep voice, whose tones pierced its utmost recesses, and infused new life and hope into his breast, which said—­“Juliet loves you.’”

CHAPTER XV.

    She hath forsaken God and trusted man,
    And the dark curse by man inherited
    Hath fallen upon her.—­S.M.

We must now return to Godfrey Hurdlestone, and we find him comfortably settled in the hospitable mansion of Captain Whitmore, a great favorite with aunt Dorothy, and an object of increasing interest and sympathy to the fair Juliet.

Had she forgotten Anthony?  Oh, no.  She still loved him, but dared not whisper to her own heart the forbidden fact.  Did she believe him guilty?  Not exactly.  But the whole affair was involved in mystery, and she had not confidence enough in her own judgment to overrule the prejudices of others.  She could not pronounce him innocent, and she strove to banish his image as a matter of necessity—­a sacrifice that duty demanded of her—­from her mind.

Could she receive with pleasure the attentions of such a man as Godfrey Hurdlestone?  She did, for he was so like Anthony, that there were times when she could almost have fancied them one and the same.  He wanted the deep feeling—­the tenderness—­the delicacy of her absent lover, but he had wit, beauty, and vivacity, an imposing manner, and that easy assurance which to most women is more attractive than modest merit.

Juliet did not love Godfrey, but his conversation amused her, and helped to divert her mind from brooding over unpleasant thoughts.  She received him with kindness, for his situation claimed her sympathy, and she did all in her power to reconcile him to the change which had taken place in his circumstances.  Godfrey was not insensible to the difference in her manner, when addressing him, to what it had been formerly, and he attributed that to a growing attachment which was but the result of pity.  Without giving him the least encouragement to entertain hopes she never meant to realize, Juliet, with all the romance of her nature, had formed the happy scheme of being able to convert the young infidel from the paths of doubt and error, and animating him with an earnest zeal to obtain a better heritage than the one he had lost.