t from beneath the mass, leaving
Edward IV. still struggling under it: the former, with his moustache,
ermine cloak, and other appendages, in pitiable disorder, was now
haranguing the audience in the tone of a deeply-injured man. By what
means I never could divine, or even suspect, but Mr. Betty arrived at
the originator of the deed, and, to avoid more disastrous
consequences, I was obliged to call upon him the next day, and promise
never to do it again.

CHAPTER IX.

Though by no means superstitious, there was one circumstance, and only
one, with regard to which I sometimes doubted whether it was not
influenced by some fatality, and the present case was connected with
it.

With another boy, I was passing out of the archway leading upon
Windsor Terrace, in order to hear the Life Guards' band, which here
played every Sunday evening, when once more I met with Miss Curzon.
She was coming away, and at that instant was walking between two other
ladies. This time, then, there was no doubt: as I passed, she made a
very slight, but slow bend of her neck; at the same time there was in
her face a fixed and serious expression. Slight as was the
recognition, it was undoubted.

"Why, Graham," presently exclaimed the friend I was walking with,
"that lady bowed to you!"

"And why should she not?"

"And why should you blush about it so?"

Never mind that--this was, and ever has been, if not the happiest, the
loveliest moment of my life.

On turning back, that I might, should fortune favour me, obtain some
farther traces of her, I just glimpsed her as she entered a carriage,
which drove away in the direction of Datchet.

Once again, then, was I at fault, still possessing not the faintest
suspicion of her retreat, for resident in the neighbourhood I was now
confident she must be.

It was six years and more since I had heard her voice. From that
moment I had dwelt upon it and her, with all my mind, with all my
heart, and with all my soul. But then, this might have been an ideal
passion, as has happened to many of us, and we have never been less
enamoured than when in the immediate presence of its object: but in
this instance it was very different, creating a kind of fretful
happiness quite intolerable. Byron says, in his ever-glowing way,
that--

"Sweeter far than this, than these, than all,
Is first and passionate love!"

But, he should have added, what probably he meant, early love. Love at
twenty