blasted for ever! As she came to the last word, she bowed her head in
silence over the writing, and felt as if some mighty rock had fallen upon
her heart, and crushed it to dust. Had the letter breathed but one
unkind--one slighting expression of her, it would have been some
comfort--some rallying point, however forlorn and wretched; but this cruel
tenderness--this bitter generosity!

And before she had read that letter, how joyously, how breathlessly she
had anticipated rushing to her lover's breast! It seems incredible that
the space of a few minutes should suffice to blight a whole
existence--blacken without a ray of hope an entire future!

She was aroused by the sound of steps, though in another apartment; she
would not now have met Godolphin for worlds; the thought of his return
alone gave her the power of motion. She thrust the fatal letter into her
bosom; and then, in characters surprisingly distinct and clear, she wrote
her name, and placed that writing in the stead of the epistle she took
away. She judged rightly, that that single name would suffice to say all
she could not then say. Having done this, she rose, left the room, and
stole softly and unperceived into the open street.

Unconscious and careless whither she went, she hurried on, her eyes bent
on the ground, and concealing her form and face with her long mantle. The
streets at Rome are not thronged as with us; nor does there exist, in a
city consecrated by so many sublime objects, that restless and vulgar
curiosity which torments the English public. Each lives in himself, not
in his neighbour. The moral air of Rome is Indifference.

Lucilla, therefore, hurried along unmolested and unobserved, until at
length her feet failed her, and she sank exhausted, but still unconscious