“I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes,—I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that, too. He suddenly seemed to rouse himself; the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. “‘It is you,—is it, Jane? You are come back to me, then?’ “‘I am.’” * * * * * In “Lothair,” Mr. Disraeli does not leave his hero and heroine until they start to “walk the long path in peace together:” “‘Where can they have all gone?’ said Lady Corisande, looking round. ‘We must find them.’ “‘And leave this garden?’ said Lothair. ‘And I without a flower, the only one without a flower? I am afraid that is significant of my lot.’ “‘You shall choose a rose,’ said Lady Corisande. “‘Nay; the charm is, that it should be your choice.’ “But choosing the rose lost more time, and, when Corisande and Lothair reached the arches of golden yew, there were no friends in sight. “‘I think I hear sounds this way,’ said Lothair, and he led his companion farther from home. “‘I see no one,’ said Corisande, distressed, and when they had advanced a little way. “‘We are sure to find them in good time,’ said Lothair. ‘Besides, I wanted to speak to you about the garden at Muriel. I wanted to induce you to go there and help me to make it. Yes,’ he added, after some hesitation, ‘on this spot—I believe on this very spot—I asked the permission of your mother two years ago to express to you my love. She thought me a boy, and she treated me as a boy. She said I knew nothing of the world, and both our characters were unformed. I know the world now. I have committed many mistakes, doubtless many follies; have formed many opinions, and have changed many opinions; but to one I have been constant, in one I am unchanged, and that is my adoring love to you.’ “She turned pale, she stopped, then, gently taking his arm, she hid her face in his breast. “He soothed and sustained her agitated frame, and sealed with an embrace her speechless form. Then, with soft thoughts and softer words, clinging to him, he induced her to resume their stroll, which both of them now wished might assuredly be undisturbed. They had arrived at the limit of the pleasure-grounds, and they wandered into the park and its most sequestered parts. All this time Lothair spoke much, and gave her the history of his life since he first visited her home. Lady Corisande said little, but, when she was more composed, she told him that from the first her heart had been his, but everything seemed to go against her hopes. Perhaps at last, to please her parents, she would have married the Duke of Brecon, had not Lothair returned; and what he had said to her that morning at Crecy House had decided her resolution, whatever might be her lot, to unite it to no one else but him. But then came the adventure of the crucifix, and she thought all was over for her, and she quitted town in despair.”