beloved by you, it is because your
generous self-abandonment has awakened within a heart too selfish to
others a real love for yourself."

To this letter Godolphin had, hour after hour, expected a reply. He
received none--not even the lock of hair for which he had pressed. He
was disappointed--angry, with Lucilla--dissatisfied with himself. "How
bitterly," thought he, "the wise Saville would smile at my folly! I have
renounced the bliss of possessing this singular and beautiful being; for
what?--a scruple which she cannot even comprehend, and at which, in
her friendless and forlorn state, the most starched of her dissolute
countrywomen would smile as a ridiculous punctilio. And, in truth, had
I fled hence with her, should I not have made her through out life
happier--far happier, than she will be now? Nor would she, in that
happiness, have felt, like an English girl, any pang of shame. _Here,_
the tie would have never been regarded as a degradation; nor does she,
recurring to the simple laws of nature, imagine than any one _could_
so regard it. Besides, inexperienced as she is--the creature of
impulse--will she not fall a victim to some more artful and less
generous lover?--to some one who in her innocence will see only
forwardness; and who, far from protecting her as I should have done,
will regard her but as the plaything of an hour, and cast her forth the
moment his passion is sated!--Sated! O bitter thought, that the head
of another should rest upon that bosom now so wholly mine! After all, I
have, in vainly adopting a seeming and sounding virtue, merely renounced
my own happiness to leave her to the chances of being permanently
rendered unhappy, and abandoned to want, shame, destitution, by
another!"

These disagreeable and regretful thoughts were, in turn, but weakly
combated by the occasional self-congratulation that belongs to a just or
generous act, and were varied by a thousand conjectures--now of anxiety,
now of anger--as to the silence of Lucilla. Sometimes he thought---but
the thought only glanced partially across him, and was not distinctly
acknowledged--that she might seek an interview with him ere he departed;
and in this hope he did not retire to rest till the dawn broke over the
ruins of the mighty and breathless city. He then flung himself on a
sofa without undressing, but could not sleep, save in short and broken
intervals.

The next day, he put off his departure till noon, still in the hope of
h