bathed the landscape in its light.




CHAPTER VIII.

Since the evening spent at the Savarins', Graham had seen no more of
Isaura. He had avoided all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy
with which he had viewed her manner towards Rameau, and the angry amaze
with which he had heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de
Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made
him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet unpledged. But
alas! the heart was enslaved already. It was under the most fatal of all
spells,--first love conceived at first sight. He was wretched; and in
his wretchedness his resolves became involuntarily weakened. He found
himself making excuses for the beloved. What cause had he, after all,
for that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him; and if in
her youth and inexperience Isaura had made her dearest friend of a great
writer by whose genius she might be dazzled, and of whose opinions she
might scarcely be aware, was it a crime that necessitated her eternal
banishment from the reverence which belongs to all manly love? Certainly
he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings. And then
those grave reasons known only to himself, and never to be confided to
another--why he should yet reserve his hand unpledged--were not so
imperative as to admit of no compromise. They might entail a sacrifice,
and not a small one to a man of Graham's views and ambition. But what is
love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honour, too great
to offer up unknown uncomprehended, to the one beloved? Still, while
thus softened in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in