e which no woman could at the moment tolerate, few eventually
excuse, and which of all incidents was that which would most tend to
confirm his wife in her stoical obduracy. Of his offences towards
her, whatever were their number or their quality, this surely was the
least, and yet its results upon his life and fortunes would in all
probability only be equalled by the mysterious cause of their original
separation. But how much more bitter than that original separation
was their present parting! Mortifying and annoying as had been the
original occurrence, it was one that many causes and considerations
combined to enable Herbert to support. He was then in the very prime
of youth, inexperienced, sanguine, restless, and adventurous, with the
whole world and its unknown results before him, and freedom for which
he ever sighed to compensate for the loss of that domestic joy that
he was then unable to appreciate. But now twenty years, which, in the
career of such a spirit, were equal to a century of the existence of
coarser clay, had elapsed; he was bowed with thought and suffering, if
not by time; his conscience was light, but it was sad; his illusions
had all vanished; he knew the world, and all that the world could
bring, and he disregarded them; and the result of all his profound
study, lofty aspirations, and great conduct was, that he sighed for
rest. The original catastrophe had been merely a separation between
a husband and a wife; the one that had just happened, involved other
feelings; the father was also separated from his child, and a child of
such surpassing qualities, that his brief acquaintance with her had
alone sufficed to convert his dream of domestic repose into a vision
of domestic bliss.

Beautiful Venetia! so fair, and yet so dutiful; with a bosom teeming
with such exquisite sensibilities, and a mind bright with such acute
and elevated intelligence! An abstract conception of the sentiments
that might subsist between a father and a daughter, heightened by all
the devices of a glowing imagination, had haunted indeed occasionally
the solitary musing of Marmion Herbert; but what was this creation of
his poetic brain compared with the reality that now had touched his
human heart? Vainly had he believed that repose was the only solace
that remained for his exhausted spirit. He found that a new passion
now swayed his soul; a passion, too, that he had never proved; of
a nature most peculiar; pure, gentle, refined,