ted. She had now dragged on the weary
load of time throughout the winter; and the early and soft spring was
already abroad--smoothing the face of the waters, and calling life into
the boughs. Hitherto this time of the year had possessed a mysterious
and earnest attraction for Lucilla--now all its voices were mute.
The letters that Godolphin had written to her were so few, and so
restrained, in comparison with those which she had received in the
former periods of absence, that--ever alive as she was to impulse, and
unregulated by settled principles of hope--her only relief to a tearful
and spiritless dejection was in paroxysms of doubt, jealousy, and
despair.

It is the most common thing in the world, that, when we have once
wronged a person, we go on in the wrong, from a certain soreness with
which conscience links the associations of the injured party. And thus,
Godolphin, struggling with the return to his early and never-forgotten
love, felt an unwillingness that he could seldom successfully combat, in
playing the hypocrite to Lucilla. His very remorse made him unkind;
the feeling that he ought to write often, made him write seldom: and
conscious that he ought to return her expressions of eager devotion, he
returned them with involuntary awkwardness and reserve. All this is
very natural, and very evident to us; but a thousand mysteries were more
acceptable to, more sought for and more clung to, by Lucilla, than a
conjecture at the truth.

Meanwhile she fed more and more eagerly on those vain researches which
yet beguiled her time, and flattered her imagination. In a science so
false, and so unprofitable, it mattered, happily, little, whether or not
the poor disciple laboured with success; but I need scarcely tell to any
who have had the curiosity to look over the entangled schemes and quaint
figures of the art, how slender was the advancement of the daughter in
the learning of the sire. Still it was a comfort and a soothing, even to
look upon the placid heaven, and form a conjecture as to the language of
its stars. And, above all, while she questioned the future, she thought
only of her lover. But day after day passed--no letter, or worse than
none; and at length Lucilla became utterly impatient of all rest: a
nervous fever possessed her; the extreme solitude of the place filled
her with that ineffable sensation of irritability which sometimes
preludes the madness that has been produced in criminals by solitary
conf