"In short, Isabella, I offer you myself!"
"Heavens!" cried Isabella, "what do I hear? You, my lord?"
Castle of Otranto.

A novel is like a weatherglass,--where the man appears out at one time,
the woman at another. Variable as the atmosphere, the changes of our
story now re-present Lucy to the reader.

That charming young person--who, it may be remarked, is (her father
excepted) the only unsophisticated and unsullied character in the pages
of a story in some measure designed to show, in the depravities of
character, the depravities of that social state wherein characters are
formed--was sitting alone in her apartment at the period in which we
return to her. As time, and that innate and insensible fund of healing,
which Nature has placed in the bosoms of the young in order that her
great law, the passing away of the old, may not leave too lasting and
keen a wound, had softened her first anguish at her father's death, the
remembrance of Clifford again resumed its ancient sway in her heart. The
loneliness of her life, the absence of amusement, even the sensitiveness
and languor which succeed to grief, conspired to invest the image of her
lover in a tenderer and more impressive guise. She recalled his words,
his actions, his letters, and employed herself whole hours, whole days
and nights, in endeavouring to decipher their mystery. Who that has been
loved will not acknowledge the singular and mighty force with which a
girl, innocent herself, clings to the belief of innocence in her lover?
In breasts young and unacquainted with the world, there is so pure a
credulity in the existence of unmixed good, so firm a reluctance to think
that where we love there can be that which we would not esteem, or where
we admire there can be that which we ought to blame, that one may almost
deem it an argument in favour of our natural power to attain a greater