I could not but perceive that Perdita loved Raymond; methought also that he
regarded the fair daughter of Verney with admiration and tenderness. Yet I
knew that he was urging forward his marriage with the presumptive heiress
of the Earldom of Windsor, with keen expectation of the advantages that
would thence accrue to him. All the ex-queen's friends were his friends; no
week passed that he did not hold consultations with her at Windsor.

I had never seen the sister of Adrian. I had heard that she was lovely,
amiable, and fascinating. Wherefore should I see her? There are times when
we have an indefinable sentiment of impending change for better or for
worse, to arise from an event; and, be it for better or for worse, we fear
the change, and shun the event. For this reason I avoided this high-born
damsel. To me she was everything and nothing; her very name mentioned by
another made me start and tremble; the endless discussion concerning her
union with Lord Raymond was real agony to me. Methought that, Adrian
withdrawn from active life, and this beauteous Idris, a victim probably to
her mother's ambitious schemes, I ought to come forward to protect her from
undue influence, guard her from unhappiness, and secure to her freedom of
choice, the right of every human being. Yet how was I to do this? She
herself would disdain my interference. Since then I must be an object of
indifference or contempt to her, better, far better avoid her, nor expose
myself before her and the scornful world to the chance of playing the mad
game of a fond, foolish Icarus. One day, several months after my return to
England, I quitted London to visit my sister. Her society was my chief
solace and delight; and my spirits always rose at the expectation of seeing
her. Her conversation was full of pointed remark and discernment; in her
pleasant alcove, redolent with sweetest flowers, adorned by magnificent
casts, antique vases, and copies of the finest pictures of Raphael,
Correggio, and Claude, painted by herself, I fancied myself in a fairy
retreat untainted by and inaccessible to the noisy contentions of