It was then, for the first time, that Mary was rendered fully aware of the misery which her unthinking freedom had entailed upon the ardent nature of De Chastelar; it was then, for the first time, that she learned how deep and powerful had been the passion which he had nourished in his heart of hearts--that she was awakened to a consciousness that she was loved, not wisely, but too well. Heretofore she had believed, that the eagerness of the gay and gallant Frenchman to display his equestrian skill, his musical accomplishments, before her presence, and as it were in her behalf, and the devotedness with which he turned all his powers to a single object, were rather to be attributed to a desire of gaining general approbation as a gentle cavalier, a slave to beauty, and a favored servant of earth’s loveliest lady, than to a passion, the romance of which, considering the wide distinction of their sphere, would have amounted to actual insanity. Now she perceived, to her deep regret, that the arrow had been shot home, and that the barb had taken hold too firmly to be disengaged by a sudden effort, how vehement soever. She saw, in the pale cheek and hollow eye, that he had cherished hopes which reason and reality must bid him discard, at once and for ever; but which he yet had not the fortitude to tear up by the roots, and cast into oblivion. For a time he had wandered about, a spectre of his former person, among the festivities and happiness of all around him, paler every day, and more abstracted in his mien; then he had exiled himself at once from rejoicings in which he could have no share, and had buried his hopes, his anxieties, his misery, in the loneliness of his own secluded chamber.