ve dined.--George Morley takes the oars, and the boat cuts
through the dance of waves flushed by the golden sunset. Beautiful
river! which might furnish the English tale-teller with legends wild
as those culled on shores licked by Hydaspes, and sweet as those which
Cephisus ever blended with the songs of nightingales and the breath of
violets! But what true English poet ever names thee, O Father Thames,
without a melodious tribute? And what child ever whiled away summer
noons along thy grassy banks, nor hallowed thy remembrance among the
fairy days of life?

Silently Lionel bent over the side of the gliding boat; his mind carried
back to the same soft stream five years ago. How vast a space in his
short existence those five years seemed to fill! And how distant from
the young man, rich in the attributes of wealth, armed with each
weapon of distinction, seemed the hour when the boy had groaned aloud,
"'Fortune is so far, Fame so impossible!'" Farther and farther yet than
his present worldly station from his past seemed the image that had
first called forth in his breast the dreamy sentiment, which the
sternest of us in after life never, utterly forget. Passions rage and
vanish, and when all their storms are gone, yea, it may be, at the verge
of the very grave, we look back and see like a star the female face,
even though it be a child's, that first set us vaguely wondering at the
charm in a human presence, at the void in a smile withdrawn! How many of
us could recall a Beatrice through the gaps of ruined hope, seen, as by
the Florentine, on the earth a guileless infant, in the heavens a spirit
glorified! Yes--Laura was an affectation--Beatrice a reality!

George's voice broke somewhat distastefully on Lionel's reverie. "We
near our destination, and you have not asked me even the name of the
lady to whom you are to render homage. It is Lady Montfort, widow to the
last Marquess. You have no doubt heard Mr. Darrell speak of her?"

"Never Mr. Darrell--Colonel Morley often. And in the world I have heard
her cited as perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the haughtiest, woman
in England."

"Never heard Mr. Darrell mention her! that is strange indeed," said
George Morley, catching at Lionel's first words, and unnoticing his
after comment. "She was much in his house as a child, shared in his
daughter's education."

"Perhaps for that very reason he shuns her name. Never but once did
I hear him allude to his daughter; nor can