ns
to be, both single-hearted, both endowed with powerful intellect, and
powerful imagination; both of that strong and energetic temperament
which renders all impressions permanent, all strong passions immortal.
It was strange that there should have been two persons, and there were
but two, who discovered nothing of what was passing--suspected nothing
of the deep feelings which possessed the hearts of the young lovers;
while all else marked the growth of liking into love, of love into
that absolute and over-whelming idolatry, which but few souls can
comprehend, and which to those few is the mightiest of blessings or
the blackest of curses.

And those two, as is oftentimes the case, were the very two whom it
most concerned to perceive, and who imagined themselves the quickest
and the clearest sighted--Allan Fitz-Henry, and the envious Agnes.

But so true is it that the hope is oft parent to the thought, and the
thought again to security and conviction, that, having in the first
instance made up his mind that Lord St. George would be a most
suitable successor to the name of the family, and secondly, that he
was engaged in prosecuting his suit to the elder daughter, her father
gave himself no further trouble in the matter, but suffered things to
take their own course without interference.

He saw, indeed, that in public the viscount was more frequently the
companion of Agnes than of Blanche; that there seemed to be a better
and more rapid intelligence between them; and that Blanche appeared
better pleased with George Delawarr's than with the viscount's
company.

But, to a man blinded by his own wishes and prejudices, such evidences
went as nothing. He set it down at once to the score of timidity on
Blanche's part, and to the desire of avoiding unnecessary notoriety on
St. George's; and saw nothing but what was perfectly natural and
comprehensible, in the fact that the younger sister and the familiar
friend should be the mutual confidents, perhaps the go-betweens, of
the two acknowledged lovers.

He was in high good-humor, therefore; and as he fancied himself on the
high-road to the full fruition of his schemes, nothing could exceed
his courtesy and kindness to the young cornet, whom he almost
overpowered with those tokens of affection and regard which he did
not choose to lavish on the peer, lest he should be thought to be
courting his alliance.

Agnes, in the meantime, was so busy in the prosecution of her assault