sister to the last.

Brooding over this plan, resolved when the hour should come, to propose,
and insist upon its accomplishment, secure of his consent, the heart of
Perdita was lightened, or rather exalted. Her cheek was flushed by the
expectation of struggle; her eyes sparkled with the hope of triumph. Having
cast her fate upon a die, and feeling secure of winning, she, whom I have
named as bearing the stamp of queen of nations on her noble brow, now rose
superior to humanity, and seemed in calm power, to arrest with her finger,
the wheel of destiny. She had never before looked so supremely lovely.

We, the Arcadian shepherds of the tale, had intended to be present at this
festivity, but Perdita wrote to entreat us not to come, or to absent
ourselves from Windsor; for she (though she did not reveal her scheme to
us) resolved the next morning to return with Raymond to our dear circle,
there to renew a course of life in which she had found entire felicity.
Late in the evening she entered the apartments appropriated to the
festival. Raymond had quitted the palace the night before; he had promised
to grace the assembly, but he had not yet returned. Still she felt sure
that he would come at last; and the wider the breach might appear at this
crisis, the more secure she was of closing it for ever.

It was as I said, the nineteenth of October; the autumn was far advanced
and dreary. The wind howled; the half bare trees were despoiled of the
remainder of their summer ornament; the state of the air which induced the
decay of vegetation, was hostile to cheerfulness or hope. Raymond had been
exalted by the determination he had made; but with the declining day his
spirits declined. First he was to visit Evadne, and then to hasten to the
palace of the Protectorate. As he walked through the wretched streets in
the neighbourhood of the luckless Greek's abode, his heart smote him for