e fainted in the arms of
her attendant. Sir Launcelot, aroused by this circumstance, assisted
Dolly in seating her mistress on a couch, where she soon recovered, and
saw the knight on his knees before her. "I am still happy," said he, "in
being able to move your compassion, though I have been held unworthy of
your esteem."--"Do me justice," she replied; "my best esteem has been
always inseparably connected with the character of Sir Launcelot
Greaves."--"Is it possible?" cried our hero; "then surely I have no
reason to complain. If I have moved your compassion, and possess your
esteem, I am but one degree short of supreme happiness--that, however, is
a gigantic step. O Miss Darnel! when I remember that dear, that
melancholy moment."--So saying he gently touched her hand, in order to
press it to his lips, and perceived on her finger the very individual
ring which he had presented in her mother's presence, as an interchanged
testimony of plighted faith. Starting at the well-known object, the
sight of which conjured up a strange confusion of ideas, "This," said he,
"was once the pledge of something still more cordial than esteem."
Aurelia, blushing at this remark, while her eyes lightened with unusual
vivacity, replied, in a severer tone, "Sir, you best know how it lost its
original signification."--"By Heaven! I do not, madam!" exclaimed our
adventurer. "With me it was ever held a sacred idea throned within my
heart, cherished with such fervency of regard, with such reverence of
affection, as the devout anchorite more unreasonably pays to those
sainted reliques that constitute the object of his adoration."--"And,
like those reliques," answered Miss Darnel, "I have been insensible of my
votary's devotion. A saint I must have been, or something more, to know
the sentiments of your heart by inspiration."

"Did I forbear," said he, "to express, to repeat, to enforce the dictates
of the purest passion that ever warmed the human breast, until I was
denied access, and formally discarded by that cruel dismission?"--"I must
beg your pardon, sir," cried Aurelia, interrupting him hastily, "I know
not what you mean."--"That fatal sentence," said he, "if not pronounced
by your own lips, at least written by your own fair hand, which drove me
out an exile for ever from the paradise of your affection."--"I would
not," she replied, "do Sir Launcelot Greaves the injury to suppose him
capable of imposition; but you talk of things to wh