Duke. O gentle sir! this shape again!"--The Chances.

That evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London. It is the nature of
solitude to make passions calm on the surface--agitated in the deeps.
Sidney had placed his whole existence in one object. When the letter
arrived that told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible
of the terrible and dismal blank--the "void abyss"--to which all his
future was suddenly changed, than roused to vehement and turbulent
emotion. But Camilla's letter had, as we have seen, raised his courage
and animated his heart. To the idea of her faith he still clung with
the instinct of hope in the midst of despair. The tidings that she
was absolutely betrothed to another, and in so short a time since her
rejection of him, let loose from all restraint his darker and more
tempestuous passions. In a state of mind bordering upon frenzy, he
hurried to London--to seek her--to see her; with what intent--what hope,
if hope there were--he himself could scarcely tell. But what man who has
loved with fervour and trust will be contented to receive the sentence
of eternal separation except from the very lips of the one thus
worshipped and thus foresworn?

The day had been intensely cold. Towards evening the snow fell fast and
heavily. Sidney had not, since a child, been before in London; and the
immense City, covered with a wintry and icy mist, through which the
hurrying passengers and the slow-moving vehicles passed, spectre-like,
along the dismal and slippery streets-opened to the stranger no
hospitable arms. He knew not a step of the way--he was pushed to and
fro--his scarce intelligible questions impatiently answered--the snow
covered him--the frost pierced to his veins. At length a man, more
kindly than the rest, seeing that he was a stranger to London, procured
him a hackney-coach, and directed the driver to the distant quarter
of Berkeley Square. The snow balled under the hoofs of the horses--the
groaning vehicle proceeded at the pace of a hearse. At length, and
after a period of such suspense, and such emotion, as Sidney never
in after-life could recall without a shudder, the coach stopped--the
benumbed driver heavily descended--the sound of the knocker knelled loud
through the muffled air--and the light from Mr. Beaufort's hall glared
full upon the dizzy eyes of the visitor. He pushed aside the porter, and
sprang into the hall. Luckily, one of the footmen who had attended Mrs.
Beaufort to