en teased and wearied with its commonplace
current: all the dull detail of county tattle, in which the squire's
lady was a proficient, and with which Miss Temple was too highly bred
not to appear to sympathise; and yet the conversation, to Ferdinand,
appeared quite charming. Every accent of Henrietta's sounded like
wit; and when she bent her head in assent to her companion's obvious
deductions, there was about each movement a grace so ineffable, that
Ferdinand could have sat in silence and listened, entranced, for ever:
and occasionally, too, she turned to Captain Armine, and appealed on
some point to his knowledge or his taste. It seemed to him that he had
never listened to sounds so sweetly thrilling as her voice. It was a
birdlike burst of music, that well became the sparkling sunshine of her
violet eyes.

His late companions entered. Ferdinand rose from his seat; the windows
of the salon were open; he stepped forth into the garden. He felt the
necessity of being a moment alone. He proceeded a few paces beyond the
ken of man, and then leaning on a statue, and burying his face in his
arm, he gave way to irresistible emotion. What wild thoughts dashed
through his impetuous soul at that instant, it is difficult to
conjecture. Perhaps it was passion that inspired that convulsive
reverie; perchance it might have been remorse. Did he abandon himself
to those novel sentiments which in a few brief hours had changed all his
aspirations and coloured his whole existence; or was he tortured by that
dark and perplexing future, from which his imagination in vain struggled
to extricate him?

He was roused from his reverie, brief but tumultuous, by the note of
music, and then by the sound of a human voice. The stag detecting the
huntsman's horn could not have started with more wild emotion. But one
fair organ could send forth that voice. He approached, he listened; the
voice of Henrietta Temple floated to him on the air, breathing with a
thousand odours. In a moment he was at her side, the squire's lady was
standing by her; the gentlemen, for a moment arrested from a political
discussion, formed a group in a distant part of the room, the rector
occasionally venturing in a practised whisper to enforce a disturbed
argument. Ferdinand glided in unobserved by the fair performer. Miss
Temple not only possessed a voice of rare tone and compass, but
this delightful gift of nature had been cultivated with refined art.
Ferdinand, himself a