-rubble-dubble.'

And this did not make him much wiser or merrier. Love has its fevers,
its recoveries, and its relapses. The patient--nay even his nurse and
his doctor, if he has taken to himself such officers in his
distress--may believe the malady quite cured--the passion burnt out--the
flame extinct--even the smoke quite over, when a little chance puff of
rivalry blows the white ashes off, and, lo! the old liking is still
smouldering. But this was not Devereux's case. He remembered when his
fever--not a love one--and his leave of absence at Scarborough, and that
long continental tour of hers with Aunt Rebecca and Gertrude
Chattesworth, had carried the grave, large-eyed little girl away, and
hid her from his sight for more than a year, very nearly _two_ years,
the strange sort of thrill and surprise with which he saw her
again--tall and slight, and very beautiful--no, not _beautiful_,
perhaps, if you go to rule and compass, and Greek trigonometrical
theories; but there was an indescribable prettiness in all her features,
and movements, and looks, higher, and finer, and sweeter than all the
canons of statuary will give you.

How prettily she stands! how prettily she walks! what a sensitive,
spirited, clear-tinted face it is! This was pretty much the
interpretation of his reverie, as Colonel Stafford's large and
respectable party obligingly vanished for a while into air. Is it sad? I
think it _is_ sad--I don't know--and how sweetly and how drolly it
lighted up; at that moment he saw her smile--the pleasant mischief in
it--the dark violet glance--the wonderful soft dimple in chin and
cheek--the little crimson mouth, and its laughing coronet of pearls--and
then all earnest again, and still so animated! What feminine
intelligence and character there is in that face!--'tis pleasanter to me
than conversation--'tis a fairy tale, or--or a dream, it's so
interesting--I never know, you see, what's coming--Is not it wonderful?
What is she talking about now?--what does it signify?--she's so
strangely beautiful--she's like those Irish melodies, I can't reach all
their meaning; I only know their changes keep me silent, and are playing
with my heart-strings.

Devereux's contemplation of the animated _tete-a-tete_, for such, in
effect, it seemed to him at the other side of the table, was, however,
by no means altogether pleasurable. He began to think Mervyn conceited;
there was a 'provoking probability of succeeding' about him, an