Evening after evening was thus passed away—poor Emily tied to the chess-board with an adversary who seemed to look upon her as a machine to move the pieces, with which he could be cross when beaten; while the two ladies discussed such circumstantial evidence as the day had collected, and communicated their various fancies founded on the said facts. Can it be wondered at that Emily's thoughts would wander from scenes like these? Thoughts rarely wander without an object; and that object once found, they fix there with all the intensity which any thing of sentiment acquires in solitude or idleness.
Absence is a trial whose result is often fatal to love; but there are two sorts of absence. I would not advise a lover to stake his fortune or his feelings on the faith of the mistress whose absence is one of flattery, amusement, and that variety of objects so destructive to the predominance of one—at least not to trust an incipient attachment to such an ordeal; but he may safely trust absence which is passed in loneliness, where the heart, thrown upon itself, finds its resource in that most imaginative faculty—memory. The merits of that lover must be small indeed, whom a few lonely walks,
