this room; he will be shown into the drawing-room."

With a hasty step and a burning cheek Clarence quitted the house, and
hurried, first to his solitary apartments, and thence, impatient of
loneliness, to the peaceful retreat of his benefactor.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

A maiden's thoughts do check my trembling hand.--DRAYTON.

There is something very delightful in turning from the unquietness and
agitation, the fever, the ambition, the harsh and worldly realities of
man's character to the gentle and deep recesses of woman's more secret
heart. Within her musings is a realm of haunted and fairy thought, to
which the things of this turbid and troubled life have no entrance.
What to her are the changes of state, the rivalries and contentions
which form the staple of our existence? For her there is an intense
and fond philosophy, before whose eye substances flit and fade like
shadows, and shadows grow glowingly into truth. Her soul's creations
are not as the moving and mortal images seen in the common day: they
are things, like spirits steeped in the dim moonlight, heard when all
else are still, and busy when earth's labourers are at rest! They are

"Such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Is rounded by a sleep."