, Dec. 28, 18--.

The receipt of such a letter could hardly add to the profounder grief
which preyed in the innermost core of Lucretia's heart; but in repelling
the effort she had made to distract that grief by ambition, it blackened
the sullen despondency with which she regarded the future. As the insect
in the hollow snare of the ant-lion, she felt that there was no footing
up the sides of the cave into which she had fallen; the sand gave way to
the step. But despondency in her brought no meekness; the cloud did not
descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its darkness was tinged with
the fires which it fed. The heart, already so embittered, was stung and
mortified into intolerable shame and wrath. From the home that should
have been hers, in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down
on the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had supplanted her,
as one worthless and polluted. Though, from motives of obvious delicacy,
Vernon had not said expressly that he had seen the letter to Mainwaring,
the unfamiliar and formal tone which he assumed indirectly declared
it, and betrayed the impression it had made, in spite of his reserve.
A living man then was in possession of a secret which justified his
disdain, and that man was master of Laughton! The suppressed rage
which embraced the lost lover extended darkly over this witness to
that baffled and miserable love. But what availed rage against either?
Abandoned and despoiled, she was powerless to avenge. It was at this
time, when her prospects seemed most dark, her pride was most crushed,
and her despair of the future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard
as the only friend left to her under the sun. Even the vices she
perceived in him became merits, for they forbade him to despise her. And
now, this man rose suddenly into another and higher aspect of character.
Of late, though equally deferential to her, there had been something
more lofty in his mien, more assured on his brow; gleams of a secret
satisfaction, even of a joy, that he appeared anxious to suppress, as
ill in harmony with her causes for dejection, broke out in his looks
and words. At length, one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he
informed her that he was free to return to France; that even without
the peace between England and France, which (known under the name of
the Peace of Amiens) had been just concluded, he should have crossed the
Channel. The advocacy and interest of friends wh