she had known a previous attachment, however determined she might be
to subdue it? Often the desire for this just and honourable confession
trembled on her lips, and as often was it checked by some chance
circumstance or some maiden fear. Despite their connection, there was
not yet between them that delicious intimacy which ought to accompany
the affiance of two hearts and souls. The gloom of the house; the
restraint on the very language of love imposed by a death so recent
and so deplored, accounted in much for this reserve. And for the
rest, Robert Beaufort prudently left them very few and very brief
opportunities to be alone.

In the meantime, Philip (now persuaded that the Beauforts were ignorant
of his brother's fate) had set Mr. Barlow's activity in search
of Sidney; and his painful anxiety to discover one so dear and so
mysteriously lost was the only cause of uneasiness apparent in the
brightening Future. While these researches, hitherto fruitless, were
being made, it so happened, as London began now to refill, and gossip
began now to revive, that a report got abroad, no one knew how (probably
from the servants) that Monsieur de Vaudemont, a distinguished French
officer, was shortly to lead the daughter and sole heiress of Robert
Beaufort, Esq., M.P., to the hymeneal altar; and that report very
quickly found its way into the London papers: from the London papers
it spread to the provincial--it reached the eyes of Sidney in his now
gloomy and despairing solitude. The day that he read it he disappeared.

CHAPTER XIX.

"Jul.... Good lady, love him!
You have a noble and an honest gentleman.
I ever found him so.
Love him no less than I have done, and serve him,
And Heaven shall bless you--you shall bless my ashes."
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: The Double Marriage.

We have been too long absent from Fanny; it is time to return to her.
The delight she experienced when Philip made her understand all the
benefits, the blessings, that her courage, nay, her intellect, had
bestowed upon him, the blushing ecstasy with which she heard (as they
returned to H----, the eventful morning of her deliverance, side by
side, her hand clasped in his, and often pressed to his grateful lips)
his praises, his thanks, his fear for her safety, his joy at regaining
her--all this amounted to a bliss, which, till then, she could not have
conceived that life was capable of bestowing. And when he left her at
H