rom, they confirmed its information, in spite of so
long an absence, and of a dress one would have studied for a disguise: a
horseman's great coat, with a stamp-up cape, and his hat flapped...
but what could escape the alertness of a sense truly guided by love?
A transport then like mine was above all consideration, or schemes of
surprise; and I, that instant, with the rapidity of the emotions that I
felt the spur of, shot into his arms, crying out, as I threw mine round
his neck: "My life!... my soul!... my Charles!.." and without further
power of speech, swooned away, under the pressing agitation of joy and
surprise.

Recovered out of my entrancement, I found myself in my charmer's arms,
but in the parlour, surrounded by a crowd which this event had gathered
round us, and which immediately, on a signal from the discreet landlady,
who currently took him for my husband, cleared the room, and desirably
left us alone to the raptures of this reunion; my joy at which had like
to have proved, at the expense of my life, its power superior to that of
grief at our fatal separation.

The first object then, that my eyes opened on, was their supreme idol,
and my supreme wish, Charles, on one knee, holding me fast by the hand
and gazing on me with a transport of fondness. Observing my recovery,
he attempted to speak, and give vent to his patience of hearing my voice
again, to satisfy him once more that it was I; but the mightiness and
suddenness Of the surprise continuing to stun him, choked his utterance:
he could only stammer out a few broken, half-formed, filtering accents,
which my ears greedily drinking in, spelt, and put together, so as to
make out their sense: "After so long!... so cruel an absence!... my
dearest Fanny!... can it?... can it be you?..." stifling me at the time
with kisses, that, stopping my opening mouth, at once prevented the
answer that he panted for, and increased the delicious disorder in
which all my senses were rapturously lost. However, amidst this crowd of
ideas, and all blissful ones, there obtruded only one cruel doubt that
poisoned nearly all the transcendant happiness: and what was it, but my
dread of its being too excessive to be real? I trembled now with my
fear of its being no more than a dream, and of waking out of it into
the horrors of finding it one. Under this fond apprehension, imagining
I could not make too much of the present prodigious joy, before it would
vanish and leave me in the d