ill with expression which is
strange. We contrast these pleasant sights and new emotions with
hackneyed objects and worn sensations. Another glance and another
thrill, and we spring into each other's arms. What can be more natural?

Ah, that we should awake so often to truth so bitter! Ah, that charm
by charm should evaporate from the talisman which had enchanted our
existence!

And so it was with this sweet woman, whose feelings grow under the pen.
She had repaired to a splendid assembly to play her splendid part
with the consciousness of misery, without the expectation of hope.
She awaited without interest the routine which had been so often
uninteresting; she viewed without emotion the characters which had never
moved. A stranger suddenly appeared upon the stage, fresh as the morning
dew, and glittering like the morning star. All eyes await, all tongues
applaud him. His step is grace, his countenance hope, his voice music!
And was such a being born only to deceive and be deceived? Was he to run
the same false, palling, ruinous career which had filled so many hearts
with bitterness and dimmed the radiancy of so many eyes? Never! The
nobility of his soul spoke from his glancing eye, and treated the foul
suspicion with scorn. Ah, would that she had such a brother to warn, to
guide, to love!

So felt the Lady Aphrodite! So felt; we will not say so reasoned. When
once a woman allows an idea to touch her heart, it is miraculous with
what rapidity the idea is fathered by her brain. All her experience, all
her anguish, all her despair, vanished like a long frost, in an instant,
and in a night. She felt a delicious conviction that a knight had at
length come to her rescue, a hero worthy of an adventure so admirable.
The image of the young Duke filled her whole mind; she had no ear for
others' voices; she mused on his idea with the rapture of a votary on
the mysteries of a new faith.

Yet strange, when he at length approached her, when he addressed her,
when she replied to that mouth which had fascinated even before it had
spoken, she was cold, reserved, constrained. Some talk of the burning
cheek and the flashing eye of passion; but a wise man would not,
perhaps, despair of the heroine who, when he approaches her, treats him
almost with scorn, and trembles while she affects to disregard him.

Lady Aphrodite has returned home: she hurries to her apartment, she
falls in a sweet reverie, her head leans upon her hand. Her so