herself to say aught on the impulse. She embraced Lucy, and bade her a hurried good-night; and each sought what was to each a sleepless pillow—but sleepless from what different causes!
Lucy was in the flutter of excited spirits, of winged hopes—of all that makes the early paradise of love. To have seen Evelyn under any circumstances would have been a joy to make the treasure of long and after-absence; but to meet him, still unchanged, and still her own, what wonder, in the quiet midnight, that his voice—every word a vow or a flattery—seemed to haunt her ear!—that those flashing eyes arose distinct almost as reality, before which it was so strange, yet sweet to shrink! Distrust is an acquired feeling—we never doubt till we have been deceived; and falsehood in no shape had formed part of Lucy's experience. She would as soon have questioned the truth of her own affection, as one assertion of Evelyn's: she believed him implicitly. Her only idea of fear sprang from a timid sense of her own inferiority. Was it possible that she could be loved by a descendant of that haughty race to which, from childhood, she had been accustomed to yield such deference—to look up to with such veneration?
Evelyn's attachment to her was of a much
