abroad--were the sole witnesses. I took a small house
in the immediate neighbourhood of London; it was surrounded on all sides
with a high wall which defied alike curiosity and attack. This was,
indeed, the sole reason which had induced me to prefer it to many more
gaudy or more graceful dwellings. But within I had furnished it with
every luxury that wealth, the most lavish and unsparing, could procure.
Thither, under an assumed name, I brought my bride, and there was the
greater part of my time spent. The people I had placed in the house
believed I was a rich merchant, and this accounted for my frequent
absences (absences which Prudence rendered necessary), for the wealth
which I lavished, and for the precautions of bolt, bar, and wall, which
they imagined the result of commercial caution.

Oh the intoxication of that sweet Elysium, that Tadmor in life's
desert,--the possession of the one whom we have first loved! It is as if
poetry, and music, and light, and the fresh breath of flowers, were all
blended into one being, and from that being rose our existence! It is
content made rapture,--nothing to wish for, yet everything to feel! Was
that air the air which I had breathed hitherto? that earth the earth
which I had hitherto beheld? No, my heart dwelt in a new world, and
all these motley and restless senses were melted into one sense,--deep,
silent, fathomless delight!

Well, too much of this species of love is not fit for a worldly tale,
and I will turn, for the reader's relief, to worldly affections. From
my first reunion with Isora, I had avoided all the former objects and
acquaintances in which my time had been so charmingly employed. Tarleton
was the first to suffer by my new pursuit. "What has altered you?" said
he; "you drink not, neither do you play. The women say you are grown
duller than a Norfolk parson, and neither the Puppet Show nor the Water
Theatre, the Spring Gardens nor the Ring, Wills's nor the Kit Cat, the
Mulberry Garden nor the New Exchange, witness any longer your homage and
devotion. What has come over you?--speak!"

"Apathy!"

"Ah! I understand,--you are tired of these things; pish, man!--go down
into the country, the green fields will revive thee, and send thee back
to London a new man! One would indeed find the town intolerably dull,
if the country were not, happily, a thousand times duller: go to the
country, Count, or I shall drop your friendship."

"Drop it!" said I, yawning, and Tarl