mbarrassed
lurking beneath all the graces of her exterior manner; and the single
glance he had caught of the pale and altered face of Lady Flora was not
calculated to reassure his mind or animate his spirits. His visit was
short; when he left the room, he lingered for a few moments in the
ante-chamber in the hope of again seeing Lady Flora. While thus
loitering, his ear caught the sound of Lady Westborough's voice: "When
Mr. Linden calls again, you have my orders never to admit him into this
room; he will be shown into the drawing-room."

With a hasty step and a burning cheek Clarence quitted the house, and
hurried, first to his solitary apartments, and thence, impatient of
loneliness, to the peaceful retreat of his benefactor.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A maiden's thoughts do check my trembling hand.--DRAYTON.

There is something very delightful in turning from the unquietness and
agitation, the fever, the ambition, the harsh and worldly realities of
man's character to the gentle and deep recesses of woman's more secret
heart. Within her musings is a realm of haunted and fairy thought, to
which the things of this turbid and troubled life have no entrance. What
to her are the changes of state, the rivalries and contentions which
form the staple of our existence? For her there is an intense and fond
philosophy, before whose eye substances flit and fade like shadows, and
shadows grow glowingly into truth. Her soul's creations are not as the
moving and mortal images seen in the common day: they are things, like
spirits steeped in the dim moonlight, heard when all else are still, and
busy when earth's labourers are at rest! They are

"Such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Is rounded by a sleep."

Hers is the real and uncentred poetry of being, which pervades and
surrounds her as with an air, which peoples her visions and animates
her love, which shrinks from earth into itself, and finds marvel and
meditation in all that it beholds within, and which spreads even over
the heaven in whose faith she so ardently believes the mystery and the
tenderness of romance.

LETTER I.

FROM LADY FLORA ARDENNE TO MISS ELEANOR TREVANION.

You say that I have not written to you so punctually of late as I used
to do before I came to London, and you impute my negligence to the
gayeties and pleasures by which I am surrounded. Eh bien! my dear
Eleanor, could you have thought of a better excuse for me?