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a gentle pressure of the hand as he passed her, or a fond caress when no eye was upon them. All the time that he gave to Lady Charlotte Isabella knew to be no more than it is customary for the master of the mansion to dedicate to the female guest of the most distinction, yet she could not but wish that all this would come to an end, that the festivities of the joyous Christmas should cease, that they should repair to town,-where, as she knew, they might live much more to themselves if they wished it, so she had not a doubt but that Mr. Willoughby did wish it, as earnestly as she did herself.

CHAP. VI.

"Oh! how the spring of love resembleth well
Th' uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shews all the glory of the Sun,
And by and by, a cloud takes all away."
SHAKSPEARE.

AT last the desired moment arrived. The party at Beechwood broke up, and Isabella took possession for the first time of her town house: that house which had made so prominent a feature in the enumerated advantages of her projected marriage. Two months before, it is possible that she would not have thought its conse

quence overrated; but the novelty of having servants and carriages at her command, of being surrounded by costly mirrors and silken draperies, all her own property, as had been so often emphatically insisted upon, was already worn off; her eye was satiated with them, and her ear weary of hearing of their omnipotency. Her heart had spoken, and it required as the sine qua non of her happiness, that she should be the first, the declared, the undisputed object of her husband's affections.

We are again alone, thought she. Again we shall be every thing to each other.

But the days of Hertfordshire returned no more!

Mr. Willoughby had morning occupations and evening engagements, in which Isabella had no share. There

was certainly nothing extraordinary in

this, and they were also not unfrequently together; but they were also often apart, and apart when it appeared to Isabella that it only depended upon Mr. Willoughby's wish that they might have been together. But Isabella would not allow herself to believe that there was any thing wrong in a creature who was to her so charming she was rather inclined to doubt the force of her own attractions. She was unused to flattery, and the rigid manner in which all that she had been taught had been invariably judged, made her more alive to her own imperfections than to the points in which she really excelled others. How little, she thought, could she hope to be sufficient in companionship to such a man as Mr. Willoughby! She half envied the volubility of Lady Charlotte. He was all kindness! all goodness! and if more variety was

But

necessary to him than to her, it proceeded only from the superiority of his acquirements, his more extended occupations, the larger number of human beings to whom he could give pleasure, or from whom he could receive it, and the ever-recurring opportunities of such communication. if she had less of his company than during the first weeks of their residence in Hertfordshire, if she had not so much of it as even in London she thought might have fallen to her share, other proofs of his love seemed to arise, to supply the place of those which she, perhaps, too sensibly regretted.

Her entrance into the fairy palace of which she was henceforth to be the deity, had been hailed by the most gay and splendid festivities, professedly given to celebrate the event of her nuptials. Nor was the feast that was

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