struggle of months was undone, that I had never loved her as I loved her
then, when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there came for
the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter,
ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities
of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made
hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature
to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature
that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of
human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not.
Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed
to have no meaning, till there came other sounds which indeed woke my
sense and made my blood run cold to hear,--the tramp of the horses, the
grating of the wheels, the voice at the door that said all was ready.

Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily
and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right
hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord
Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch upon us, though I had
till then shunned his looks; now, as I turned my eyes from Fanny's, that
look came full upon me,--soft, compassionate, benignant. Suddenly, and
with an unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis turned to Lady
Ellinor and said: "Pardon me for telling you an old story. A friend of
mine--a man of my own years--had the temerity to hope that he might one
day or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be his
daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart led him to prefer
from all her sex. My friend had many rivals; and you will not wonder,
for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young gentleman who for
months had been an inmate of the same house (hush, Lady Ellinor! you
will hear me out; the interest of my story is to come), who respected
the sanctity of the house he had entered, and had left it when he felt