her old companion in whom she had once been so
interested, had by his irregular behaviour incurred the dislike of her
mother, by whom he had once been so loved. But it would have been a
transient emotion. She might have mused over past feelings and past
hopes in a solitary ramble on the seashore; she might even have shed
a tear over the misfortunes or infelicity of one who had once been
to her a brother; but, perhaps, nay probably, on the morrow the
remembrance of Plantagenet would scarcely have occurred to her.
Long years had elapsed since their ancient fondness; a considerable
interval since even his name had met her ear. She had heard nothing
of him that could for a moment arrest her notice or command her
attention.

But now the irresistible impression that her mother disliked this very
individual filled, her with intolerable grief. What occasioned this
change in her feelings, this extraordinary difference in her emotions?
There was, apparently, but one cause. She had met Cadurcis. Could then
a glance, could even the tender intonations of that unrivalled voice,
and the dark passion of that speaking eye, work in an instant such
marvels? Could they revive the past so vividly, that Plantagenet in
a moment resumed his ancient place in her affections? No, it was not
that: it was less the tenderness of the past that made Venetia mourn
her mother's sternness to Cadurcis, than the feelings of the future.
For now she felt that her mother's heart was not more changed towards
this personage than was her own.

It seemed to Venetia that even before they met, from the very moment
that his name had so strangely caught her eye in the volume on the
first evening she had visited her relations, that her spirit suddenly
turned to him. She had never heard that name mentioned since without
a fluttering of the heart which she could not repress, and an emotion
she could ill conceal. She loved to hear others talk of him, and yet
scarcely dared speak of him herself. She recalled her emotion
at unexpectedly seeing his portrait when with her aunt, and her
mortification when her mother deprived her of the poem which she
sighed to read. Day after day something seemed to have occurred to fix
her brooding thoughts with fonder earnestness on his image. At length
they met. Her emotion when she first recognised him at Ranelagh and
felt him approaching her, was one of those tumults of the heart that
form almost a crisis in our sensations. With what d