fortune sufficient for a woman who had loved and was adored; but the
Restoration, to which she owed renewed lustre, made it seem inadequate
in comparison with her name. In my position I was so fatuous as never
to dream of a suspicion. Though my jealousy would have been of a
hundred and twenty Othello-power, that terrible passion slumbered in
me as gold in the nugget. I would have ordered my servant to thrash me
if I had been so base as ever to doubt the purity of that angel--so
fragile and so strong, so fair, so artless, pure, spotless, and whose
blue eyes allowed my gaze to sound it to the very depths of her heart
with adorable submissiveness. Never was there the slightest hesitancy
in her attitude, her look, or word; always white and fresh, and ready
for the Beloved like the Oriental Lily of the 'Song of Songs!' Ah! my
friends!" sadly exclaimed the Minister, grown young again, "a man must
hit his head very hard on the marble to dispel that poem!"

This cry of nature, finding an echo in the listeners, spurred the
curiosity he had excited in them with so much skill.

"Every morning, riding Sultan--the fine horse you sent me from
England," de Marsay went on, addressing Lord Dudley, "I rode past her
open carriage, the horses' pace being intentionally reduced to a walk,
and read the order of the day signaled to me by the flowers of her
bouquet in case we were unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw
each other almost every evening in society, and she wrote to me every
day, to deceive the curious and mislead the observant we had adopted a
scheme of conduct: never to look at each other; to avoid meeting; to
speak ill of each other. Self-admiration, swagger, or playing the
disdained swain,--all these old manoeuvres are not to compare on
either part with a false passion professed for an indifferent person
and an air of indifference towards the true idol. If two lovers will