should be proud of being mean! The moment Isabel escaped to dress for
dinner, she opened her lover's note. It was as follows.--

Be in the room, your retreat, at nine this evening. Let the window be
left unclosed. Precisely at that hour I will be with you. I shall
have everything in readiness for your flight. Be sure, dearest
Isabel, that nothing prevents your meeting me there, even if all your
house follow or attend you. I will bear you from all. Oh, Isabel! in
spite of the mystery and wretchedness of your letter, I feel too
happy, too blest at the thought that our fates will be at length
united, and that the union is at hand. Remember nine.
A. M.

Love is a feeling which has so little to do with the world, a passion
so little regulated by the known laws of our more steady and settled
emotions, that the thoughts which it produces are always more or less
connected with exaggeration and romance. To the secret spirit of
enterprise which, however chilled by his pursuits and habits, still
burned within Mordaunt's breast, there was a wild pleasure in the
thought of bearing off his mistress and his bride from the very home
and hold of her false friends and real foes; while in the
contradictions of the same passion, Isabel, so far from exulting at
her approaching escape, trembled at her danger and blushed for her
temerity; and the fear and the modesty of woman almost triumphed over
her brief energy and fluctuating resolve.




CHAPTER XXVII.