he grotto of
the goddess. He entered the silent cavern, and bathed his temples in the
delicious waters of the fountain.

It was perhaps well that it was not at that moment Lucilla made to him
her strange and unlooked-for confession: again and again he said to
himself (as if seeking for a justification of his self-sacrifice), "Her
father was not Italian, and possessed feeling and honour: let me not
forget that he loved me!" In truth, the avowal of this wild girl; an
avowal made indeed with the ardour--but also breathing of the innocence,
the inexperience--of her character--had opened to his fancy new and
not undelicious prospects. He had never loved her, save with a lukewarm
kindness, before that last hour; but now, in recalling her beauty, her
tears, her passionate abandonment can we wonder that he felt a strange
beating at his heart, and that he indulged that dissolved and luxurious
vein of tender meditation which is the prelude to all love? We must
recall, too, the recollection of his own temper, so constantly yearning
for the unhackneyed, the untasted; and his deep and soft order of
imagination, by which he involuntarily conjured up the delight of living
with one, watching one, so different from the rest of the world, and
whose thoughts and passions (wild as they might be) were all devoted to
him!

And in what spot were these imaginings fed and coloured? In a spot which
in the nature of its divine fascination could be found only beneath one
sky, that sky the most balmy and loving upon earth! Who could think of
love within the haunt and temple of

"That Nympholepsy of some fond despair,"

and not feel that love enhanced, deepened, modulated, into at once a
dream and a desire?

It was long that Godolphin indulged himself in recalling the image of
Lucilla; but nerved at length and gradually, by harder, and we may hope
better, sentiments than those of a love which he could scarcely indulge
without criminality on the one hand, or, what must have appeared to the
man of the world, derogatory folly on the other; he turned his thoughts
into a less voluptuous channel, and prepared, though with a reluctant
step, to depart homewards. But what was his amaze, his confusion, when,
on reaching the mouth of the cave, he saw within a few steps of him
Lucilla herself!

She was walking alone and slowly, her eyes bent upon the ground, and did
not perceive him. According to a common custom with the middle classes
of Rome, her r