Agreeably to this determination, he abstained from visiting those haunts
in which Evelyn shone; and if accident brought them together, his manner
was embarrassed and abrupt. She wondered,--at last, perhaps she
resented,--it may be that she grieved; for certain it is that Maltravers
was right in thinking that her manner had lost the gayety that
distinguished it at Merton Rectory. But still it may be doubted whether
Evelyn had seen enough of Legard, and whether her fancy and romance were
still sufficiently free from the magical influences of the genius that
called them forth in the eloquent homage of Maltravers, to trace,
herself, to any causes connected with her younger lover the listless
melancholy that crept over her. In very young women--new alike to the
world and the knowledge of themselves--many vague and undefined feelings
herald the dawn of Love; shade after shade and light upon light succeeds
before the sun breaks forth, and the earth awakens to his presence.

It was one evening that Legard had suffered himself to be led into a
party at the ----- ambassador's; and there, as he stood by the door, he
saw at a little distance Maltravers conversing with Evelyn. Again he
writhed beneath the tortures of his jealous anguish; and there, as he
gazed and suffered, he resolved (as Maltravers had done before him) to
fly from the place that had a little while ago seemed to him Elysium! He
would quit Paris, he would travel, he would not see Evelyn again till the
irrevocable barrier was passed, and she was the wife of Maltravers! In
the first heat of this determination, he turned towards some young men
standing near him, one of whom was about to visit Vienna. He gayly
proposed to join him,--a proposal readily accepted, and began conversing
on the journey, the city, its splendid and proud society, with all that
cruel exhilaration which the forced spirits of a stricken heart can alone
display, when Evelyn (whose conference with Maltravers was ended) passed
close by him. She was leaning on Lady Doltimore's arm, and the admiring