For was it not with the daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight? And is not that a common type of us all--as if Passion delighted in contradictions? As the Diver, in Schiller’s exquisite ballad, fastened upon the rock of coral in the midst of the gloomy sea, so we cling the more gratefully to whatever of fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out to us in the depths of Hate and Strife. But, perhaps, Vaudemont would not so suddenly and so utterly have rendered himself to a passion that began, already, completely to master his strong spirit, if he had not, from Camilla’s embarrassment, her timidity, her blushes, intoxicated himself with the belief that his feelings were not unshared. And who knows not that such a belief, once cherished, ripens our own love to a development in which hours are as years? It was, then, with such emotions as made him almost insensible to every thought but the luxury of breathing the same air as his cousin, which swept from his mind the Past, the Future--leaving nothing but a joyous, a breathless PRESENT on the Face of Time, that he repaired to Beaufort Court. He did not return to H---- before he went, but he wrote to Fanny a short and hurried line to explain that he might be absent for some days at least, and promised to write again, if he should be detained longer than he anticipated. In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutions which had marked the eras in Fanny’s moral existence took its date from that last time they had walked and conversed together. The very evening of that day, some hours after Philip was gone, and after Simon had retired to rest, Fanny was sitting before the dying fire in the little parlour in an attitude of deep and pensive reverie. The old woman-servant, Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved Fanny with her whole heart, came into the room as was her wont before going to bed, to see that the fire was duly out, and all safe: and as she approached the hearth, she started to see Fanny still up. “Dear heart alive!” she said; “why, Miss Fanny, you will catch your death of cold,--what are you thinking about?” “Sit down, Sarah; I want to speak to you.” Now, though Fanny was exceedingly kind, and attached to Sarah, she was seldom communicative to her, or indeed to any one. It was usually in its own silence and darkness that that lovely mind worked out its own doubts. “Do you, my sweet young lady? I’m sure anything I can do--” and Sarah seated herself in her master’s great chair, and drew it close to Fanny. There was no light in the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward a pale glimmer on the two faces bending over it,--the one so strangely beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in its youth and innocence,--the other withered, wrinkled, meagre, and astute. It was like the Fairy and the Witch together. “Well, miss,” said the crone, observing that, after a considerable pause, Fanny was still silent,--“Well--”