with a fearful
earnestness which seemed to annihilate hope; but had she not also, in
the same meeting, confessed that I was dear to her? Had not her lip
given me a sweeter and a more eloquent assurance of that confession than
words?--and could hope perish while love existed? She had left me,--she
had bid me farewell forever; but that was no proof of a want of love,
or of her unworthiness. Gerald, or Barnard, evidently possessed an
influence over father as well as child. Their departure from------might
have been occasioned by him, and she might have deplored, while she
could not resist it; or she might not even have deplored; nay, she might
have desired, she might have advised it, for my sake as well as
hers, were she thoroughly convinced that the union of our loves was
impossible.

But, then, of what nature could be this mysterious authority which
Gerald possessed over her? That which he possessed over the sire,
political schemes might account for; but these, surely, could not have
much weight for the daughter. This, indeed, must still remain doubtful
and unaccounted for. One presumption, that Gerald was either no favoured
lover or that he was unacquainted with her retreat, might be drawn from
his continued residence at Devereux Court. If he loved Isora, and knew
her present abode, would he not have sought her? Could he, I thought,
live away from that bright face, if once allowed to behold it? unless,
indeed (terrible thought!) there hung over it the dimness of guilty
familiarity, and indifference had been the offspring of possession.
But was that delicate and virgin face, where changes with every moment
coursed each other, harmonious to the changes of the mind, as shadows in
a valley reflect the clouds of heaven!--was that face, so ingenuous, so
girlishly revelant of all,--even of the slightest, the most transitory,
emotion,--the face of one hardened in deceit and inured to shame? The
countenance is, it is true, but a faithless mirror; but what man that
has studied women will not own that there is, at least while the down
of first youth is not brushed away, in the eye and cheek of zoned and
untainted Innocence, that which survives not even the fruition of
a lawful love, and has no (nay, not even a shadowed and imperfect)
likeness in the face of guilt? Then, too, had any worldlier or mercenary
sentiment entered her breast respecting me, would Isora have flown from
the suit of the eldest scion of the rich house of Dever