vain the lively descriptions of
friends full of all the delights of Castellamare or Sorrento: the story
of festivities and pleasures seemed poor and even vulgar with the life
she led. Talk of illusions as you will, that of being in love is the
only one that moulds the nature or elevates the heart! Out of its
promptings come the heroism of the least venturesome or the poetry of
the least romantic! Insensibly stealing into the affections of another,
we have to descend into our own hearts for the secrets that win success;
and how resolutely we combat all that is mean or unworthy in our nature,
simply that we may offer a more pure sacrifice on the altar we kneel to!

And there and thus she lived, the flattered beauty--the young girl, to
whom an atmosphere of homage and admiration seemed indispensable--whose
presence was courted in the society of the great world, and whose very
caprices had grown to become fashions--a sort of strange, half-real
existence, each day so like another that time had no measure how it
passed.

The library of the villa supplied them with ample material to study the
history of the Stuarts; and in these pursuits they passed the mornings,
carefully noting down the strange eventualities which determined their
fate, and canvassing together in talk the traits which so often had
involved them in misfortune. Gerald, now restored to full health, was
a perfect type of the illustrious race he had sprung from: and not
only was the resemblance in face and figure, but all the mannerisms
of Charles Edward were reproduced in the son. The same easy, gentle,
yielding disposition, dashed by impulses of the wildest daring, and
darkened occasionally by moods of obstinacy; miserable under the thought
of having offended, and almost more wretched when the notion of being
forgiven imparted a sense of his own inferiority; he was one of those
men whose minds are so many-sided that they seem to have no fixed
character. Even now, though awakened to the thought of the great destiny
that might one day befall him--assured as he felt of his birth and
lineage--there were intervals in which no sense of ambition stirred him,
when he would willingly accept the humblest lot in life should it only
promise peace and tranquillity.

Strangely enough it was by these vacillations and changes of temperament
that Guglia had attached herself so decisively to his fortunes. The very
want which she supplied to his nature made the tie between them