egulated, so trained and educated in sacred
principle, that she forbade herself the luxury to _remember._ Of his
present mode of life she heard little. He was traced from city to city;
from shore to shore; from the haughty noblesse of Vienna to the gloomy
shrines of Memphis, by occasional report, and seemed to tarry long in no
place. This roving and unsettled life, which secretly assured her of her
power, suffused his image in all tender and remorseful dyes. Ah! where
is that one person to been vied, could we read the heart?

The actress had heard incidentally from Saville of Godolphin's
attachment to the beautiful countess. She longed to see her; and when,
one night at the theatre, she was informed that Lady Erpingham was in
the Lord Chamberlain's box close before her, she could scarcely command
her self-possession sufficiently to perform with her wonted brilliancy
of effect.

She was greatly struck by the singular nobleness of Lady Erpingham's
face and person: and Godolphin rose in her estimation, from the justice
of the homage he had rendered to so fair a shrine. What a curious trait,
by the by, that is in women;--their exaggerated anxiety to see one who
has been loved by the man in whom they themselves take interest: and the
manner which the said man rises or falls in their estimation, according
as they admire, or are disappointed in, the object of his love.

"And so," said Saville, supping one night with the actress, "you think
the world does not overlaud Lady Erpingham?"

"No: she is what Medea would have been, if innocent--full of majesty,
and yet of sweetness. It is the face of a queen of some three thousand
years back. I could have worshipped her."

"My little Fanny, you are a strange creature. Methinks you have a dash
of poetry in you."

"Nobody who has not written poetry could ever read my character,"
answered Fanny, with naivete, yet with truth. "Yet you have not much of
the ideal about you, pretty one."

"No; because I was so early thrown on myself, that I was forced to make
independence my chief good. I soon saw that if I followed my heart
to and fro, wherever it led me, I should be the creature of every
breath--the victim of every accident: I should have been the very soul
of romance; lived on a smile; and died, perhaps, in a ditch at last.
Accordingly, I set to work with my feelings, and pared and cut them down
to a convenient compass. Happy for me that I did so! What would have
become of me if,