ina been married six
years, and the same lover, then her husband, been really guilty of what
she suspected, who does not feel that it would have been very unnatural
to have been shocked in the least at the occurrence? She would not have
loved him less, nor admired him less, nor would he have been less "the
noble and the unrivalled,"--he would have taken his glass too much, have
joked the next morning on the event, and the gentle Evelina would
have made him a cup of tea; but that which would have been a matter
of pleasantry in the husband would have been matter of damnation in a
lover. But to return to Lucy.

If it be so hard, so repellent, to believe a lover guilty even of a
trivial error, we may readily suppose that Lucy never for a moment
admitted the supposition that Clifford had been really guilty of gross
error or wilful crime. True that expressions in his letter were
more than suspicious; but there is always a charm in the candour of
self-condemnation. As it is difficult to believe the excellence of those
who praise themselves, so it is difficult to fancy those criminal who
condemn. What, too, is the process of a woman's reasoning? Alas! she is
too credulous a physiognomist. The turn of a throat, with her, is the
unerring token of nobleness of mind; and no one can be guilty of a sin
who is blessed with a beautiful forehead! How fondly, how fanatically
Lucy loved! She had gathered together a precious and secret hoard,--a
glove, a pen, a book, a withered rose-leaf,--treasures rendered
inestimable because he had touched them; but more than all, had she
the series of his letters,--from the first formal note written to her
father, meant for her, in which he answered an invitation, and requested
Miss Brandon's acceptance of the music she had wished to have, to the
last wild and, to her, inexplicable letter in which he had resigned her
forever. On these relics her eyes fed for hours; and as she pored
over them, and over thoughts too deep not only for tears but for all
utterance or conveyance, you might have almost literally watched the
fading of her rich cheek and the pining away of her rounded and elastic
form.

It was just in such a mood that she was buried when her uncle knocked at
her door for admittance. She hurried away her treasures, and hastened to
admit and greet him.

"I have come," said he, smiling, "to beg the pleasure of your company
for an old friend who dines with us to-day. But, stay, Lucy, your hair