Still, however, noon--evening came on, and no tidings. As he once more
returned home, in the faint hope that some intelligence might await him
there, his servant hurried eagerly out to him with a letter--it was from
Lucilla, and it was worthy of her: give it to the reader.

LUCILLA'S LETTER.

"I have read your letter to another! Are not these words sufficient to
tell you all? All? no! you never, never, never can tell how crushed and
broken my heart is. Why?--because you are a man, and because you have
never loved as I loved. Yes, Godolphin, I knew that I was not one whom
you could love. I am a poor, ignorant, untutored girl, with nothing at my
heart but a great world of love which I could never tell. Thou saidst I
could not comprehend thee: alas! how much was there--is there--in my
nature--in my feelings, which have been, and ever will be, unfathomable to
thy sight!

"But all this matters not; the tie between us is eternally broken. Go,
dear, dear Godolphin! link thyself to that happier other one--seemingly so
much more thine equal than the lowly and uncultivated Lucilla. Grieve not
for me; you have been kind, most kind, to me. You have taken away hope,
but you have given me pride in its stead;--the blow which has crushed my
heart has given strength to my mind. Were you and I left alone on the
earth, we must still be apart; I could never, never live with you again;
my world is not your world; when our hearts have ceased to be in common,
what of union is there left to us? Yet it would be something if, since
the future is shut out from me, you had not also deprived me of the past:
I have not even the privilege of looking back! What! all the while my
heart was lavishing itself upon thee--all the while I had no other
thought, no other dream but thee--all the while I sat by thy side, and