. She is all we can conceive. Mild and
pure as youthful priests, we bow down before our altar. But the idol to
which we breathe our warm and gushing vows, and bend our eager knees,
all its power, does it not exist only in our idea; all its beauty, is
it not the creation of our excited fancy? And then the sweetest of
superstitions ends. The long delusion bursts, and we are left like
men upon a heath when fairies vanish; cold and dreary, gloomy, bitter,
harsh, existence seems a blunder.

But just when we are most miserable, and curse the poet's cunning and
our own conceits, there lights upon our path, just like a ray fresh
from the sun, some sparkling child of light, that makes us think we are
premature, at least, in our resolves. Yet we are determined not to be
taken in, and try her well in all the points in which the others failed.
One by one, her charms steal on our warming soul, as, one by one, those
of the other beauty sadly stole away, and then we bless our stars, and
feel quite sure that we have found perfection in a petticoat.

But our Duke--where are we? He had read woman thoroughly, and
consequently knew how to value the virgin pages on which his thoughts
now fixed. He and May Dacre wandered in the woods, and nature seemed to
them more beautiful from their beautiful loves. They gazed upon the
sky; a brighter light fell o'er the luminous earth. Sweeter to them the
fragrance of the sweetest flowers, and a more balmy breath brought on
the universal promise of the opening year.

They wandered in the woods, and there they breathed their mutual
adoration. She to him was all in all, and he to her was like a new
divinity. She poured forth all that she long had felt, and scarcely
could suppress. From the moment he tore her from the insulter's arms,
his image fixed in her heart, and the struggle which she experienced
to repel his renewed vows was great indeed. When she heard of
his misfortunes, she had wept; but it was the strange delight she
experienced when his letter arrived to her father that first convinced
her how irrevocably her mind was his.

And now she does not cease to blame herself for all her past obduracy;
now she will not for a moment yield that he could have been ever
anything but all that was pure, and beautiful, and good.

CHAPTER XII.

_Another Betrothal_

BUT although we are in love, business must not be utterly neglected, and
Mr. Dacre insisted that the young Duke should for one mor