from her, happiness must
depart, and then be exchanged for its opposite. The same peculiarities of
character rendered her sorrows agonies; her fancy magnified them, her
sensibility made her for ever open to their renewed impression; love
envenomed the heart-piercing sting. There was neither submission, patience,
nor self-abandonment in her grief; she fought with it, struggled beneath
it, and rendered every pang more sharp by resistance. Again and again the
idea recurred, that he loved another. She did him justice; she believed
that he felt a tender affection for her; but give a paltry prize to him who
in some life-pending lottery has calculated on the possession of tens of
thousands, and it will disappoint him more than a blank. The affection and
amity of a Raymond might be inestimable; but, beyond that affection,
embosomed deeper than friendship, was the indivisible treasure of love.
Take the sum in its completeness, and no arithmetic can calculate its
price; take from it the smallest portion, give it but the name of parts,
separate it into degrees and sections, and like the magician's coin, the
valueless gold of the mine, is turned to vilest substance. There is a
meaning in the eye of love; a cadence in its voice, an irradiation in its
smile, the talisman of whose enchantments one only can possess; its spirit
is elemental, its essence single, its divinity an unit. The very heart and
soul of Raymond and Perdita had mingled, even as two mountain brooks that
join in their descent, and murmuring and sparkling flow over shining
pebbles, beside starry flowers; but let one desert its primal course, or be
dammed up by choaking obstruction, and the other shrinks in its altered
banks. Perdita was sensible of the failing of the tide that fed her life.
Unable to support the slow withering of her hopes, she suddenly formed a
plan, resolving to terminate at once the period of misery, and to bring to
an happy conclusion the late disastrous events.

The anniversary was at hand of the exaltation of Raymond to the office of
Protector; and it was customary to celebrate this day by a splendid
festival. A variety of feelings urged Perdita to shed double magnificence
over the scene; yet, as she arrayed herself for the evening gala, she
wondered herself at the pains she took, to render sumptuous the celebration
of an event which appeared to her the beginning of her sufferings. Woe
befall the day, she thought, woe, tears, and mourning betide t