Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth.  Once my heart sat lightly in my bosom; all the beauty of the world was doubly beautiful, irradiated by the sun-light shed from my own soul.  O wherefore are love and ruin for ever joined in this our mortal dream?  So that when we make our hearts a lair for that gently seeming beast, its companion enters with it, and pitilessly lays waste what might have been an home and a shelter.”

By degrees his health was shaken by his misery, and then his intellect yielded to the same tyranny.  His manners grew wild; he was sometimes ferocious, sometimes absorbed in speechless melancholy.  Suddenly Evadne quitted London for Paris; he followed, and overtook her when the vessel was about to sail; none knew what passed between them, but Perdita had never seen him since; he lived in seclusion, no one knew where, attended by such persons as his mother selected for that purpose.

CHAPTER IV.

The next day Lord Raymond called at Perdita’s cottage, on his way to Windsor Castle.  My sister’s heightened colour and sparkling eyes half revealed her secret to me.  He was perfectly self-possessed; he accosted us both with courtesy, seemed immediately to enter into our feelings, and to make one with us.  I scanned his physiognomy, which varied as he spoke, yet was beautiful in every change.  The usual expression of his eyes was soft, though at times he could make them even glare with ferocity; his complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips—­lips which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love.  His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather the work of study than nature.  Thus full of contradictions, unbending yet haughty, gentle yet fierce, tender and again neglectful, he by some strange art found easy entrance to the admiration and affection of women; now caressing and now tyrannizing over them according to his mood, but in every change a despot.

At the present time Raymond evidently wished to appear amiable.  Wit, hilarity, and deep observation were mingled in his talk, rendering every sentence that he uttered as a flash of light.  He soon conquered my latent distaste; I endeavoured to watch him and Perdita, and to keep in mind every thing I had heard to his disadvantage.  But all appeared so ingenuous, and all was so fascinating, that I forgot everything except the pleasure his society afforded me.  Under the idea of initiating me in the scene of English politics and society, of which I was soon to become a part, he narrated a number of anecdotes, and sketched many characters; his discourse, rich and varied, flowed on, pervading all my senses with pleasure.  But