Perhaps of the two, Villiers showed himself the most enraptured at this meeting. He gazed on his sweet wife, followed every motion, and hung upon her voice, with all the delight of an exile, restored to his long-lost home. "What a transporting change," he said, "to find myself with you--to see you in the same room with me--to know again that, lovely and dear as you are, that you are mine--that I am again myself--not the miserable dog that has been wandering about all day--a body without a soul! For a few short hours, at least, Ethel will call me hers." "Indeed, indeed, love," she replied, "we will not be separated again." "We will not even think about that tonight," said Villiers. "The future is dark and blank, the present as radiant as your own sweet self can make it." On the following day--and the following day did come, in spite of Ethel's wishes, which would have held back the progress of time: it came and passed away; hour after hour stealing along, till it dwindled to a mere point. On the following day, they consulted earnestly on what was to be done. Villiers was greatly averse to Ethel's leaving her present abode, where every one was so very kind and attentive to her, and he was sanguine in his hopes of obtaining in the course of the week, just commenced, a sum, sufficient to carry them to Paris or Brussels, were they could remain till his affairs were finally arranged, and the payment of his debts regulated in a way to satisfy his creditors. One week of absence; Villiers used all his persuasion to induce Ethel to submit to it. "Where you can be, I can be also," was her answer; and she listened unconvinced to the detail of the inconveniences which Villiers pointed out: at last he almost got angry. "I could call you unkind, Ethel," he said, "not to yield to me." "I will yield to you," said Ethel, "but you are wrong to ask me." "Never mind that," replied her husband, "do concede this point, dearest; if not because it is best that you should, then because I wish it, and ask it of you. You say that your first desire is to make me happy, and you pain me exceedingly by your--I had almost said perverseness." Thus, not convinced, but obedient, Ethel agreed to allow him to depart alone. She bargained that she should be permitted to come each day in a hackney coach to a place where he might meet her, and they could spend an hour or two together. Edward did not like this plan at all, but there was no remedy. "You are at least resolved," he said, "to spur my endeavours; I will not rest day or night, till I am enabled to get away from this vast dungeon."