enchanting, the most dangerous to its possessor. The daughter of
loneliness and seclusion--estranged wholly from all familiar or female
intercourse--rather bewildered than in any way enlightened by the few
books of poetry, or the lighter letters, she had by accident read--the
sense of impropriety was in her so vague a sentiment, that every impulse
of her wild and impassioned character effaced and swept it away. Ignorant
of what is due to the reserve of the sex, and even of the opinions of the
world--lax as the Italian world is on matters of love--she only saw
occasion to glory in her tenderness, her devotion, to one so elevated in
her fancy as the English stranger. Nor did there--however unconsciously
to herself--mingle a single more derogatory or less pure emotion with her
fanatical worship.

For my own part, I think that few men understand the real nature of a
girl's love. Arising so vividly as it does from the imagination, nothing
that the mind of the libertine would impute to it ever (or at least in
most rare in stances) sullies its weakness or debases its folly. I do not
say the love is better for being thus solely the creature of imagination:
I say only, so it is in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances of girlish
infatuation. In later life, it is different: in the experienced woman,
forwardness is always depravity.

With trembling steps and palpitating heart, Godolphin sought the apartment
in which he expected to find Lucilla. There, in one corner of the room,
her face covered with her mantle, he beheld her: he hastened to that spot;
he threw himself on his knees before her; with a timid hand he removed the
covering from her face; and through tears, and paleness, and agitation,
his heart was touched to the quick by its soft and loving expression.

"Wilt thou forgive me?" she faltered; "it was thine own letter that