Lord Avondale, touched by his manner and by his kindness, accepted his hand, and struggling with pride—with love,—“I will obey your commands,” he at length said, “and fly from her presence, if it be for her happiness:—her happiness is the dearest object of my life. Yet let me see her before I leave her.”—“No,” said the Duke, “it is too dangerous.” “If this must not be,” said Lord Avondale, “at least tell her, that for her sake, I have conquered even my own nature in relinquishing her hand, and, with it every hope, but too strongly cherished by me. Tell her, that if I do this, it is not because I do not feel for her the most passionate and most unalterable attachment. I renounce her only, as I trust, to consign her to a happier fate. You are her father:—you best know the affection she deserves:—if she casts away a thought sometimes on me, let her not suffer for the generosity and goodness of her heart:—let her not.”—He would have said more, but he was too deeply affected to continue:—he could not act, or dissemble:—he felt strongly, and he shewed it. CHAPTER XIII. After this conversation, Calantha saw no more of her lover: yet he was very anxious to see her once again, and much and violently agitated before he went. A few words which he had written to her he gave into Mrs. Seymour’s own hands; and this letter, though it was such as to justify the high opinion some had formed of his character, was but little calculated to satisfy the expectations of Calantha’s absurdly romantic mind; or to realize the hopes she had cherished. It was not more expressive of his deep regret at their necessary separation, than of his anxiety that she should not suffer her spirits to be depressed, or irritate her father by an opposition which would prove fruitless.—“He does not love you Calantha,” said Lady Margaret, with a malicious smile, as soon as she had read the letter—(and every one would read it):—“when men begin to speak of duty, they have ceased to love.” This remark gave Calantha but little consolation. Lord Avondale had quitted her too, without even bidding her farewell; and her thoughts continually dwelt on this disappointment. Calantha knew not then that her misery was more than shared,—that Lord Avondale, though too proud to acknowledge it, was a prey to the deepest grief upon her account,—that he lived but in the hope of possessing the only being upon earth to whom he had attached himself,—and that the sentence pronounced against both, was a death stroke to his happiness, as well as to her own. When strong love awakes for the first time in an inexperienced heart it is so diffident, so tremblingly fearful, that it dares scarcely hope even for a return; and our own demerits appear before us, in such exaggerated colours, and the superior excellence of the object we worship arises so often to our view, that it seems but the natural consequence of our own presumption, that we should be neglected and forgotten.