his is the true
history, which has been sadly perverted by fiction.

_Miss Ilex._ There is, indeed, something grand in that long-enduring
constancy: something terribly impressive in that veiled spectral
image of robed and crowned majesty. You have given this, doctor, as an
instance that the first love is not necessarily the strongest, and this,
no doubt, is frequently true. Even Romeo had loved Rosalind before he
saw Juliet. But love which can be so superseded is scarcely love. It
is acquiescence in a semblance: acquiescence, which may pass for love
through the entire space of life, if the latent sympathy should never
meet its perfect counterpart.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Which it very seldom does; but acquiescence in
the semblance is rarely enduring, and hence there are few examples of
lifelong constancy. But I hold with Plato that true love is single,
indivisible, unalterable.

_Miss Ilex._ In this sense, then, true love is first love; for the
love which endures to the end of life, though it may be the second in
semblance, is the first in reality.

The next morning Lord Curryfin said to Miss Niphet. 'You took no
part in the conversation of last evening. You gave no opinion on the
singleness and permanence of love.'

_Miss Niphet._ I mistrust the experience of others, and I have none of
my own.

_Lord Curryfin._ Your experience, when it comes, cannot but confirm the
theory. The love which once dwells on you can never turn to another.

_Miss Niphet._. I do not know that I ought to wish to inspire such an
attachment.

_Lord Curryfin._ Because you could not respond to it?

_Miss Niphet._. On the contrary; because I think it possible I might
respond to it too well.

She paused a moment, and then, afraid of trusting herself to carry on
the dialogue, she said: 'Come into the hall, and play at battledore and
shuttlecock.'

He obeyed the order: but in the exercise her every movement developed
some new grace, that maintained at its highest degree the intensity of
his passionate admiration.

[Illustration: Her every movement developed some new grace 275-235]

CHAPTER XXX

A CAPTIVE KNIGHT--RICHARD AND ALICE

--dum fata sinunt, jungamus amores:
mox veniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput:
jam subrepet iners