cilla, in a tone of such deep despair, that
it chilled and appalled Godolphin, who did not, however, attribute her
grief (the grief of this mere child--a child so wayward and eccentric)
to any other cause than that feeling of abandonment which the young so
bitterly experience at being left utterly alone with persons unfamiliar
to their habits and opposed to their liking.

He sought to soothe her, but she repelled him. Her features worked
convulsively: she walked twice across the room; then stopped opposite to
him, and a certain strained composure on her brow seemed to denote that
she had arrived at some sudden resolution.

"Wouldst thou ask me," she said, "what cause took me into the streets as
the shadows darkened, and enabled me lightly to bear threats at home and
risk abroad?"

"Ay, Lucilla: will you tell me?"

"Thou wast the cause!" she said, in a low voice, trembling with emotion,
and the next moment sank on her knees before him.

With a confusion that ill became so practised and favoured a gallant,
Godolphin sought to raise her. "No! no!" she said; "you will despise
me now: let me lie here, and die thinking of thee. Yes!" she continued,
with an inward but rapid voice, as he lifted her reluctant frame from
the earth, and hung over her with a cold and uncaressing attention:
"yes! you I loved--I adored--from my very childhood. When you were by,
life seemed changed to me; when absent, I longed for night, that I might
dream of you. The spot you had touched I marked out in silence, that I
might kiss it and address it when you were gone. You left us; four years
passed away: and the recollection of you made and shaped my very nature.
I loved solitude; for in solitude I saw you--in imagination I spoke
to you--and methought you answered and did not chide. You
returned--and--and--but no matter: to see you, at the hour you usually
leave home; to see you, I wandered forth with the evening. I tracked
you, myself unseen; I followed you at a distance: I marked you disappear
within some of the proud palaces that never know what love is. I
returned home weeping, but happy. And do you think--do you dare to
think--that I should have told you this, had you not driven me mad!--had
you not left me reckless of what henceforth was thought of me--became of
me! What will life be to me when you are gone? And now I have said all!
Go! You do not love me: I know it: but do not say so. Go--leave me; why
do you not leave me?"

Does there l