Marian de Vaux spoke in a manner totally different from that which her cousin had seen her display for many a year. Her beautiful eyes were full of light and feeling; a smile, half-tender, half-playful, hovered over her lip, and her voice was full of eager kindness and thrilling affection. He had remembered her thus as a girl; but, as she had grown up towards womanhood, either the feelings which had animated her bosom with such a warm and enthusiastic glow had passed away, or the expression of them had been gradually suppressed. Now, again, she was all that he remembered her, and to see her so, plunged him into a sweet vision of the past--connected, though by some fine golden threads, with the present. He had seated himself on the sofa beside her, and, still holding her right hand in his, he had glided his left arm round her waist, and then, with his eyes fixed on a distant spot of the floor, he remained in silence for two or three moments after she had done speaking. Unless man were a cold unfeeling piece of ticking mechanism, like a watch, our measures of time would always be by our sensations: and as Marian had at that moment given way to all the eagerness of her heart, the two moments that Edward de Vaux remained in thought seemed to her an age. "What is the matter, Edward?" she said. "Are you still unhappy?" "No, my beloved," he answered, looking up in her face with a glance that fully confirmed his words,--"no, my beloved; I am most happy! so happy, indeed, that, were I placed as I was before, I would almost again undergo the pain which this discovery first caused me, to enjoy the delight which my Marian's conduct has bestowed." "And did you doubt what that conduct would be, Edward?" she demanded, half-reproachfully. Edward de Vaux coloured, and might have hesitated; for conscience, that bitter smiter, who always finds his time to apply the lash, now struck him severely for all those images which an irritable fancy had suggested concerning Marian's conduct. But she saved him the pain of a reply, which must either have been mortifying or insincere. "And did you doubt what my conduct would be?" she asked; and in the next moment she added, "But never mind, dear Edward; you see what it is, and do never doubt it again." "I will never doubt, as long as I live, my own beloved girl," he answered, ardently; "I will never doubt, as long as I live, that it will on every occasion be all that is good, and noble, and generous: but it was not that alone, my Marian, that made me so happy--so very, very happy."