"But whom can the exile possibly have seen of birth and fortunes to
render him a fitting spouse for his daughter? Whom, my Lord, except
yourself?"

"Me!" exclaimed Harley, angrily, and changing colour. "I worthy of such
a creature?---I, with my habits! I, silken egotist that I am! And you,
a poet, to form such an estimate of one who might be the queen of a
poet's dreasn!"

"My Lord, when we sat the other night round Riccabocca's hearth, when I
heard her speak, and observed you listen, I said to myself, from such
knowledge of human nature as comes, we know not how, to us poets,--I
said, 'Harley L'Estrange has looked long and wistfully on the heavens,
and he now hears the murmur of the wings that can waft him towards them.'
And then I sighed, for I thought how the world rules us all in spite of
ourselves, and I said, 'What pity for both, that the exile's daughter is
not the worldly equal of the peer's son!' And you too sighed, as I thus
thought; and I fancied that, while you listened to the music of the wing,
you felt the iron of the chain. But the exile's daughter is your equal
in birth, and you are her equal in heart and in soul."

"My poor Leonard, you rave," answered Harley, calmly. "And if Violante
is not to be some young prince's bride, she should be some young poet's."

"Poet's! Oh, no!" said Leonard, with a gentle laugh. "Poets need repose
where they love!"

Harley was struck by the answer, and mused over it in silence. "I
comprehend," thought he; "it is a new light that dawns on me. What is