"And my father," said Lucilla, unheeding the answer, "always foretold that
thy lot and mine were to be entwined."

"And the prophecy, perhaps, disposed you to the fact. You might never
have loved me, Lucilla, if your thoughts had not been driven to dwell upon
me by the prediction."

"Nay; I thought of thee before I heard the prophecy."

"But your father foretold me, dearest--cross and disappointment in my
love--was he not wrong? am I not blest with you?"

Lucilla threw herself into her lover's arms, and, as she kissed him,
murmured, "Ah, if I could make thee happy!" The next day Godolphin
departed for Rome. Lucilla was more dejected at his departure than she
had been even in his earliest absence. The winter was now slowly
approaching, and the weather was cold and dreary. That year it was
unusually rainy and tempestuous, and as the wild gusts howled around her
solitary home--how solitary now!--or she heard the big drops hurrying down
on the agitated lake, she shuddered at her own despondent thoughts, and
dreaded the gloom and loneliness of the lengthened night. For the first
time since she had lived with Godolphin she turned, but disconsolately, to
the company of books.

Works of all sorts filled their home, but the spell that once spoke to her
from the page was broken. If the book was not of love, it possessed no
interest;--if of love, she thought the description both tame and false.
No one ever painted love so as fully to satisfy another:--to some it is
too florid--to some too commonplace; the god, like other gods, has no