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ETHEL CHURCHILL.
49

changes in his expressive face, to listen to his picturesque and impassioned discourse. It now struck her suddenly how much she should miss them. The knowledge of her own heart, and of his, had come together. Hope had never been the companion of love. Even in her most secret communings with herself, she had never admitted even the fancy of their union. But to-night she felt deeply within her secret soul the utter happiness of loving and being beloved. What were her future brilliant prospects? The truth within her whispered, that she had been happier, even in the lonely lot which she that very evening had ridiculed, with Walter Maynard, than in a palace, and not his. For the first time, she regretted her marriage. Lord Marchmont had been the cause of her drawing comparisons. Her superior mind at once detected the narrowness of his; and her warm heart shrank from his cold one. She saw that he did not love her—that he never even thought whether she loved him.

"'Tis a strange thing," she murmured,