surmounting, at any cost, so determined an opposition. I conquered, too! but my victory was dearly bought. In the progress of my attempt, I became aware that the eyes I had seen fixed with coldness, or disapprobation, upon my own demeanour, were occasionally animated by the most varying and intellectual expression; that the address which had been directed so calmly, so regretfully to myself, was graced at other times by the most refined perfection of courtly breeding; that Worsley’s low intense voice was in itself a captivating music; and that the words of its breathing were ineffaceable from the hearts of those to whom they were addressed with fervour. My hour, in short, was come; I loved him! and with the deeper and the purer interest, that I was long uncertain of the nature of his feelings towards me.

I was long in doubt, I repeat, of the character of Worsley’s feelings; but it was the doubting of a woman’s heart,—sanguine and restless, and varying with the alternate caprices of hope and confidence. He never, indeed, said that he loved me: but it was at my side he rode in the ring; it was my hand that he still claimed in the midnight masking; it was to commune with me only that he lingered, when the royal barges swept by moonlight over the Thames during the summer nights. It is true that he was often abstracted and inattentive; but the scattered words of his lips came tempered with a grace and an interest unknown to the flippant loquacity of others.

Meanwhile, the state of public affairs wholly withdrew my father’s observation from myself and my attachments; and even when he addressed Sir Wilmot, their conversation turned upon the intrigues of the Protestant faction, or the unpopular and unfeeling pertinacity of the queen. For myself, engrossed by the influence of a new feeling, I remained wholly and strangely unconscious of the critical position of my native country; and throughout the extent of England, there probably existed not a person upon whom the final blow of the Revolution fell with a more startling abruptness than myself,—under whose very eyes the wires had been affixed to its state puppets.

My father hesitated not to follow the fortunes of a prince whose errors he deplored; but to whom, although himself of the Reformed Church, he felt his loyalty devoted beyond the intervention of sectarian zeal. And I, even if Sir Wilmot Worsley had not been destined to share the exile of his king—how cheerfully, how rejoicingly, would I have accompanied my indulgent and partial parent to his retreat at St. Germain’s. But in Lord Herbert’s opposition to my entreaties for permission to share his flight, he was for the first time absolute. He bade me return to Wrocksley, and become a protectress to his orphan Dorathea, trusting to better times for our reunion. He cared not, he said, that his daughters should be apportioned as the prize of some needy papist; he chose that we at least should remain true to our country and its established creed; and, placing us audibly under the protection and the blessing of Heaven, Lord Herbert departed with his master; thus abandoning his private for his public duties. Verily he had his reward!

Even as my father’s resolve had decreed, I returned to that home wherein Dora had been sporting away her happy hours of childhood; I returned, and oh! with how changed a spirit! At once refined and humiliated—elevated and degraded—I was touched, as by a wizard’s wand, into the tenderest and sweetest charities of womanhood. My look, my voice, my bearing were no longer the same: like the statue of the ancient sculptor, my obduracy was softened by the soul within;—I loved!—and with the doubting of a humbled heart.

Had I been assured of Worsley’s affection,—had we parted in the plighted confidence of lovers,—such was my trust in his nobleness of heart and hand, that during his absence I should not have endured one single uneasy hour. But it was not so. His attentions had been but those of a friend and a brother; he was deeply involved in the disastrous troubles of the times; he was gone forth into voluntary exile,—and how might the recollection of Miranda prevail against the active interests in which his feelings and his fortunes were now engaged? He might forget me—perhaps had already forgotten me!—and I—there was not an opinion—a word—a look of his that I did not treasure within my heart of hearts. The echoes of his voice,—I seemed to hear them in my solitude; the fastidious delicacy of his principles, which had rendered so many things worthless in my sight; the cold, but high-bred elegance of his demeanour,—all haunted my remembrance, till I scorned myself for such abject worship of one who had given me no right to make him the god of my idolatry. I scorned myself; yet still I went on loving as before!