ious,' replied Montoni, regarding him with stern
displeasure, 'though I know how to despise the common-place sentences,
which are frequently uttered against superstition. I will enquire
further into this affair.' He then left the room; and his guests,
separating for the night, retired to their respective apartments.

CHAPTER VIII

He wears the rose of youth upon his cheek.
SHAKESPEARE

We now return to Valancourt, who, it may be remembered, remained
at Tholouse, some time after the departure of Emily, restless and
miserable. Each morrow that approached, he designed should carry
him from thence; yet to-morrow and to-morrow came, and still saw him
lingering in the scene of his former happiness. He could not immediately
tear himself from the spot, where he had been accustomed to converse
with Emily, or from the objects they had viewed together, which appeared
to him memorials of her affection, as well as a kind of surety for its
faithfulness; and, next to the pain of bidding her adieu, was that of
leaving the scenes which so powerfully awakened her image. Sometimes he
had bribed a servant, who had been left in the care of Madame Montoni's
chateau, to permit him to visit the gardens, and there he would wander,
for hours together, rapt in a melancholy, not unpleasing. The terrace,
and the pavilion at the end of it, where he had taken leave of Emily, on
the eve of her departure from Tholouse, were his most favourite haunts.
There, as he walked, or leaned from the window of the building, he would
endeavour to recollect all she had said, on that night; to catch the
tones of her voice, as they faintly vibrated on his memory, and to
remember the exact expression of her countenance, which sometimes came
suddenly to his fancy, like a vision; that beautiful countenance, which
awakened, as by instantaneous magic, all the tenderness of his heart,
and seemed to tell with irresistible eloquence--that he had lost her
forever! At these moments, his hurried steps would have discovered to a
spectator the despair of his heart. The character of Montoni, such as
he had received from hints, and such as his fears represented it, would
rise to his view, together with all the dangers it seemed to threaten
to Emily and to his love. He blamed himself, that he had not urged these
more forcibly to her, while it might have been in his power to detain
her, and that he had suffered an absurd and criminal delicacy, as he
termed it, to conqu