l dreams; he woke, late at noon, languid and dejected. As his
servant, who had lived with him some years, attended him in rising,
Godolphin observed on his countenance that expression common to persons
of his class when they have something which they wish to communicate,
and are watching their opportunity.

"Well, Malden!" said he, "you look important this morning: what has
happened?"

"E--hem! Did not you observe, sir, a carriage behind us as we crossed
the marshes? Sometimes you might just see it at a distance, in the
moonlight."

"How the deuce should I, being within the carriage, see behind me? No; I
know nothing of the carriage: what of it?"

"A person arrived in it, sir, a little after you--would not retire to
bed--and waits you in your sitting-room."

"A person! what person!"

"A lady, sir,--a young lady;" said the servant, suppressing a smile.

"Good heavens!" ejaculated Godolphin: "leave me." The valet obeyed.

Godolphin, not for a moment doubting that it was Lucilla who had thus
followed him, was struck to the heart by this proof of her resolute and
reckless attachment. In any other woman, so bold a measure would, it is
true, have revolted his fastidious and somewhat English taste. But in
Lucilla, all that might have seemed immodest arose, in reality, from
that pure and spotless ignorance which, of all species of modesty, is
the most enchanting, the most dangerous to its possessor. The daughter
of loneliness and seclusion--estranged wholly from all familiar or
female intercourse--rather bewildered than in any way enlightened by
the few books of poetry, or the lighter letters, she had by accident
read--the sense of impropriety was in her so vague a sentiment, that
every impulse of her wild and impassioned character effaced and swept it
away. Ignorant of what is due to the reserve of the sex, and even of
the opinions of the world--lax as the Italian world is on matters of
love--she only saw occasion to glory in her tenderness, her devotion,
to one so elevated in her fancy as the English stranger. Nor did
there--however unconsciously to herself--mingle a single more derogatory
or less pure emotion with her fanatical worship.

For my own part, I think that few men understand the real nature of a
girl's love. Arising so vividly as it does from the imagination, nothing
that the mind of the libertine would impute to it ever (or at least in
most rare in stances) sullies its weakness or debases its folly. I