ad so haughtily cultured knew not how to
cope. Whatever assault I might expect from either, I was unable
to assail again. Alike, then, in this, are the Slander and the
Phantom,--that which appalls us most in their power over us is our
impotence against them.

But up rose the sun, chasing the shadows from the earth, and brightening
insensibly the thoughts of man. After all, Margrave had been baffled
and defeated, whatever the arts he had practised and the secrets he
possessed. It was, at least, doubtful whether his evil machinations
would be renewed. He had seemed so incapable of long-sustained fixity
of purpose, that it was probable he was already in pursuit of some new
agent or victim; and as to this commonplace and conventional spectre,
the so-called World, if it is everywhere to him whom it awes, it is
nowhere to him who despises it. What was the good or bad word of a Mrs.
Poyntz to me? Ay, but to Lilian? There, indeed, I trembled; but still,
even in trembling, it was sweet to think that my home would be her
shelter,--my choice her vindication. Ah! how unutterably tender and
reverential Love becomes when it assumes the duties of the guardian, and
hallows its own heart into a sanctuary of refuge for the beloved!

CHAPTER LX.

The beautiful lake! We two are on its grassy margin,--twilight melting
into night; the stars stealing forth, one after one. What a wonderful
change is made within us when we come from our callings amongst men,
chafed, wearied, wounded; gnawed by our cares, perplexed by the doubts
of our very wisdom, stung by the adder that dwells in cities,--Slander;
nay, even if renowned, fatigued with the burden of the very names that
we have won! What a change is made within us when suddenly we find
ourselves transported into the calm solitudes of Nature,--into scenes
familiar to our happy dreaming childhood; back, back from the dusty
thoroughfares of our toil-worn manhood to the golden fountain of our
youth! Blessed is the change, even when we have no companion beside us
to whom the heart can whisper its sense of relief and joy. But if the
one in whom all our future is garnered up be with us there, instead of
that weary World which has so magically vanished away from the eye and
the thought, then does the change make one of those rare epochs of life
in which the charm is the stillness. In the pause from all by which our
own turbulent struggles for happiness trouble existence, we feel with a
rapt amaz