thinking of Jehoshaphat and Sion. Strange
coincidence of sentiment--strange and sweet!
The enamoured Montacute hung over her with pious rapture, as they
examined together Mr. Roberts's Syrian drawings, and she alike charmed
and astonished him by her familiarity with every locality and each
detail. She looked like a beautiful prophetess as she dilated with
solemn enthusiasm on the sacred scene. Tancred called on her every day,
because when he called the first time he had announced his immediate
departure, and so had been authorised to promise that he would pay his
respects to her every day till he went. It was calculated that by these
means, that is to say three or four visits, they might perhaps travel
through Mr. Roberts's views together before he left England, which would
facilitate their correspondence, for Tancred had engaged to write to the
only person in the world worthy of receiving his letters. But, though
separated, Lady Bertie and Bellair would be with him in spirit; and
once she sighed and seemed to murmur that if his voyage could only be
postponed awhile, she might in a manner become his fellow-pilgrim, for
Lord Bertie, a great sportsman, had a desire to kill antelopes, and,
wearied with the monotonous slaughter of English preserves, tired even
of the eternal moors, had vague thoughts of seeking new sources of
excitement amid the snipes of the Grecian marshes, and the deer and wild
boars of the desert and the Syrian hills.
While his captain was repeating his inquiries for instructions on the
deck of the Basilisk at Greenwich, moored off the Trafalgar Hotel,
Tancred fell into reveries of female pilgrims kneeling at the Holy
Sepulchre by his side; then started, gave a hurried reply, and drove
back quickly to town, to pass the remainder of the morning in Brook
Street.
The two or three days had expanded into two or three weeks, and Tancred
continued to call daily on Lady Bertie and Bellair, to say farewell. It
was not wonderful: she was the only person in London who understood him;
so she delicately intimated, so he profoundly felt. They had the same
ideas; they must have the same idiosyncrasy. The lady asked with a sigh
why they had not met before; Tancred found some solace in the thought
that they had at least become acquainted. There was something about this
lady very interesting besides her beauty, her bright intelligence, and
her seraphic thoughts. She was evidently the creature of impulse; to
a certa
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