"Such an object were little worth the spur, Sir," replied the lady, laughing: "but if I understand you right, your friendship with my brother must have begun when he was in France." "Long before that," replied the cavalier; "but when last I parted with him he was in Italy, where he left me to return to his own house. We bade each other farewell under the Logga de Lanzi, in the fair town of Florence." "Oh! how I long to see that place," cried Annie Walton--"it is one of the dreams of my imagination which, perhaps, may never be realized." "Few dreams of the imagination ever are," answered her companion. "He who gives himself up to fancy is like a man led by a child, who tells him of all the wonderful things that he will show him in the garden of the world, and when he comes to see the marvels, finds them but May blossoms and brier roses, that fade as soon as gathered, and leave a bunch of thorns in his hand." Annie Walton raised her eyes to the stranger's brow, and gazed at the rich floating hair that covered it, to see if she could trace any of the marks of that age which has proved the world and discovered its delusions. But all was youthful and open; there was nothing grey or grave, and she replied-- "You speak sadly of this earth and its enjoyments, sir; and yet I would not part with Fancy and all her pleasant deceits if I could." "Never! Never!" cried Sir Francis Clare, eagerly. "If I may use a paradox, sweet lady, the deceits of reality are ten times more dangerous than those of imagination. If all things are delusions except the hopes of a higher and a holier world, let us keep the pleasant delusions at least, and they are those of fancy--but what have we here?--The last news from London?" "The reply of the parliament to the king's message," answered the lady; "and thirty-one good reasons for rejecting his majesty's offers, with the godly and soul-saving declaration of several pious men concerning Popery and Prelacy." The stranger laughed. "How easy is it," he cried, "to cover gross treason, not only to king, but to country, with fair pretexts of freedom, or to hide what they themselves call the most carnal self-seeking with a garb of religious zeal, and to give the fairest names to the blackest passions of our nature! 'Tis a trite remark, but one that forces itself upon us every day; and yet this is the trade that succeeds in the world, so that gross deceit raises itself to high places, and sits in purple and fine linen, while Honesty is left to beg her bread, and plain Truth stands shivering in a ragged blanket." "But I should think such barefaced hypocrisy as this," answered the lady, "would deceive no one. People may pretend to believe it, but it must be mere affectation, as bad as the hypocrisy itself."