In England he again meets Lucile, a cold-mannered, correct, pure-minded, but secretly ardent English girl, with an odd resemblance in many ways to a French _jeune fille_. He mentions the subject of her step-daughter to the upright but selfish Lady Edgermond, who has set her heart on seeing Oswald the husband of Lucile. She is too honorable to try and detach him from Corinne by any underhand means, but does what she knows will be far more effectual; that is, she makes him acquainted with the fact that his father had seen Corinne in her early girlhood, had admired her, but had strongly pronounced against the marriage proposed by Lord Edgermond between her and Oswald. In the view of the late Lord Nelvil, she was too brilliant and distinguished for domestic life. This is a terrible blow to Oswald. He begins to think he must give up Corinne, and is strengthened in the idea by perceiving that the beautiful and virtuous Lucile is in love with him. Finally he marries her, decided at the last by Corinne’s inexplicable silence. She has not answered his letters for a month, and he concludes that she has forgotten him. But her silence is owing to her having left Venice and come to England. She loses a whole month in London, for very insufficient reasons—necessary, however, to the story—and at last follows Oswald to Scotland just in time to learn that he is married, to fall senseless on the road-side, and to be picked up by the Count D’Erfeuil. She returns heart-broken to Italy, and dies slowly through four long years of unbroken misery. When she is near her end Oswald comes to Florence, accompanied by his wife and child. He had begun to regret Corinne as soon as he had married Lucile, who, on her side, being naturally resentful, takes refuge in coldness and reserve. As soon as Lord Nelvil learns that his old love is in Florence and dying he wishes ardently to see her, but she refuses to receive him. He sends the child to her, and she teaches it some of her accomplishments. Lucile visits her secretly, and is converted by her eloquence to the necessity of rendering herself more attractive to her husband by displaying some graces of mind. At last Corinne consents to see Oswald once again, but it shall be, she determines, in public. This is one of the most unnatural scenes in the book. Corinne invites all her friends to assemble in a lecture hall. Thither she has herself transported and placed in an arm-chair. A young girl clad in white and crowned with flowers recites the Song of the Swan, or adieu to life, which Corinne has composed, while Oswald, listening to it and gazing on the dying poetess from his place in the crowd, is suffocated with emotion and finally faints. A few days later Corinne dies, her last act being to point with her diaphanous hand to the moon, which is partially obscured by a band of cloud such as she and Lord Nelvil had once seen when in Naples.