The youth sighed; and, gazing earnestly upon her blushing face, whispered tenderly, as he pressed her hand to his heart, "O that I could flatter myself sorrow mingled with that sigh." "Why, what is this?" said the old duke, bustling to the window; "the doctor tells me you are going to leave us. Surety you might contrive to stay till after the election." "I am very sorry, Sir," said the youth; "but the circumstance that calls me away--" "Ay, ay, the doctor told me; a near relation dangerously ill, that can't die in peace till he's seen you. Well, well, my boy, such things must be; and if he's doomed to die, I only wish him an easy death, and you a good legacy." "I cannot tell you how sorry I am to part with you," said Sir Ambrose, who now advanced, "nor how sincerely I wish you good fortune." "Thank you, thank you, Sir," said the youth: "alas! I now feel how poor words are to express my gratitude for all your kindness. But--" "I am sorry to hasten you, Mr. Seymour," said Dr. Coleman, who now approached; "but time wears apace." "True, true," said Henry, "I had forgotten. Once more farewell. God bless you all!" and he hurried away, as though fearful of his own resolution if he ventured to stay another second. For the rest of the evening, Elvira was silent and abstracted; the suddenness of the blow seemed to have stunned her, and she felt like one wandering in a dream. Was he really gone? Should she never see him more? were questions she scarcely dared even to ask herself. "He was nothing to me, a mere common acquaintance," she repeated incessantly; and yet she felt a wearisome void, a sickening disgust and impatience at every thing around her, which she had never experienced before. "What can be the matter with me," said she peevishly; "I shall never see him again; and it is the excess of weakness to feel an interest in the fate of one, who is evidently so indifferent about me; and yet he seemed affected when he said we were about to part. Was he really so? But of what consequence to me is it whether he were so or not. I shall never see him more." And Elvira sighed involuntarily at the thought. "I am devoted to other prospects. I--in short, I will think of him no more." And, in pursuance of this magnanimous resolution, she thought of nothing else all night.