old lady who had been my father's godmother--for I wished for a female
assistant in the ceremony, and this old lady could tell no secrets, for,
being excessively deaf, nobody ever talked to her, and indeed she
scarcely ever went abroad--were the sole witnesses. I took a small
house in the immediate neighbourhood of London; it was surrounded on all
sides with a high wall which defied alike curiosity and attack. This
was, indeed, the sole reason which had induced me to prefer it to many
more gaudy or more graceful dwellings. But within I had furnished it
with every luxury that wealth, the most lavish and unsparing, could
procure. Thither, under an assumed name, I brought my bride, and there
was the greater part of my time spent. The people I had placed in the
house believed I was a rich merchant, and this accounted for my frequent
absences (absences which Prudence rendered necessary), for the wealth
which I lavished, and for the precautions of bolt, bar, and wall, which
they imagined the result of commercial caution.

Oh the intoxication of that sweet Elysium, that Tadmor in life's
desert,--the possession of the one whom we have first loved! It is as
if poetry, and music, and light, and the fresh breath of flowers, were
all blended into one being, and from that being rose our existence! It
is content made rapture,--nothing to wish for, yet everything to feel!
Was that air the air which I had breathed hitherto? that earth the earth
which I had hitherto beheld? No, my heart dwelt in a new world, and all
these motley and restless senses were melted into one sense,--deep,
silent, fathomless delight!

Well, too much of this species of love is not fit for a worldly tale,
and I will turn, for the reader's relief, to worldly affections. From
my first reunion with Isora, I had avoided all the former objects and
acquaintances in which my time had been so charmingly employed.