t! By Heaven, it shall not
be!"

"But whom can the exile possibly have seen of birth and fortunes to
render him a fitting spouse for his daughter? Whom, my Lord, except
yourself?"

"Me!" exclaimed Harley, angrily, and changing colour. "I worthy of such
a creature?--I, with my habits! I, silken egotist that I am! And you, a
poet, to form such an estimate of one who might be the queen of a poet's
dream!"

"My Lord, when we sat the other night round Riccabocca's hearth, when
I heard her speak, and observed you listen, I said to myself, from such
knowledge of human nature as comes, we know not how, to us poets,--I
said, 'Harley L'Estrange has looked long and wistfully on the heavens,
and he now hears the murmur of the wings that can waft him towards
them.' And then I sighed, for I thought how the world rules us all in
spite of ourselves, and I said, 'What pity for both, that the exile's
daughter is not the worldly equal of the peer's son!' And you too
sighed, as I thus thought; and I fancied that, while you listened to
the music of the wing, you felt the iron of the chain. But the exile's
daughter is your equal in birth, and you are her equal in heart and in
soul."

"My poor Leonard, you rave," answered Harley, calmly. "And if Violante
is not to be some young prince's bride, she should be some young
poet's."

"Poet's! Oh, no!" said Leonard, with a gentle laugh. "Poets need repose
where they love!"

Harley was struck by the answer, and mused over it in silence. "I
comprehend," thought he; "it is a new light that dawns on me. What is
needed by the man whose whole life is one strain after glory--whose soul
sinks, in fatigue, to the companionship of earth--is not the love of a
nature like his own. He is right,--it is repose! While I!--it is true;
boy that he is, his intuitions are wiser than all my experience! It is
excitement, energy, elevation, that Love should bestow on me. But I have
chosen; and, at least, with Helen my life will be calm, and my hearth
sacred. Let the rest sleep in the same grave as my youth."

"But," said Leonard, wishing kindly to arouse his noble friend from a
revery which he felt was mournful, though he did not divine its true
cause,--"but you have not yet told me the name of the signorina's
suitor. May I know?"

"Probably one you never heard of. Randal Leslie,--a placeman. You
refused a place; you were right."

"Randal Leslie? Heaven forbid!" cried Leonard, revealing his surprise at
the n