“Oh! beautiful--singular--and yet ominous name!” exclaimed the young gentleman. “Yes--you are my friend--my dear friend Perdita! And now, Perdita, I will avail myself of this romantic yet not the less sincere friendship that is established between us, to ask you what caprice or fancy gave you so remarkable a Christian name?” “Because in my infancy--shortly after my birth, and before I was baptised--I was lost,--or rather stolen by gipsies,” answered Perdita, investing herself and her history with as much of the charm of mysticism as possible: “and when I was recovered from the kidnappers by my parents, they christened me Perdita--or THE LOST ONE.” “Every thing connected with you seems to be imbued with deep and enthralling interest, my dear friend,” said Charles: “a supernatural halo appears to surround you! Your beauty is of a nature so superior to aught of female loveliness that I ever before beheld--your voice has something so indescribably melting and musical that it awakens echoes in the inmost recesses of the soul--your history is strange, wild, and impressive in its very commencement--your disposition is characterised by a frankness and candour so generous that it inspires and reciprocates profound friendship the instant it meets a kindred spirit--and then there is about you a something so witching, so captivating, so enchanting, that the best and most virtuous of men would lose all sense of duty, did you--sweet syren that you are--undertake to lead them astray.” “If I have indeed found a kindred spirit in you, Charles,” said Perdita, taking his hand and pressing it as if in grateful and innocent rapture to her heaving bosom--an act which only tended to inflame the young man almost to madness,--“I shall have gained that which I have long sought, and never yet found. For my heart has hitherto been as complete a stranger to a sincere friendship as to love! When I spoke ere now of our friends in the country, I meant those acquaintances whom custom denominates by the other title.” “Perdita--my friend Perdita, the amity that we have pledged each other shall be eternal!” exclaimed Charles, in an impassioned tone. “And you will return to visit me to-morrow?” said the young woman, her fine grey eyes beaming with an unsettled lustre, as if the mingled voluptuousness of day and night met in those splendid, eloquent orbs. “Yes--oh! yes!” cried Charles, as if it were unnecessary to have asked the question. “And now I shall leave you, Perdita: I shall depart to feast my imagination on the pleasures of this interview.” Thus speaking, the young man pressed Perdita’s hand to his lips, and hurried from the room, intoxicated with a delirium of bliss, and scarcely conscious of where he was or whither he was going. CHAPTER CXXXI. THE SYREN’S ARTS AND CHARMS.