Meanwhile Geraldine had reasoned herself into a belief, almost amounting to conviction, that O'Melvyl must have very little real affection for her; yet this conviction, so far from conveying to her that satisfaction which mathematicians affirm to be inseparable from the discovery of truth, threatened to deprive every other blessing of the power of bestowing happiness; and every sentiment of honour, delicacy, and female pride, urged her to conquer a preference that was trifled with, at least, if at all returned: yet such anguish accompanied the struggle, that life itself seemed valueless after the sacrifice. Her spirits drooped-her powers declined; she was no longer the courted, flattered beauty, in the full flush of health and bloom of charms, pointed out wherever she was seen, and followed wherever she moved. Pale, drooping, languid, on the contrary, she rather realized the Italian poet's exquisite description* : "Cade • Guarini. "Cade al cadér del sole Sì scolorita in su la siepe ombrosa Lady Louisa saw the change with irrepressible vexation-saw in it the disappointment of all her hopes for Geraldine. Change of air was recommended, and her ladyship suffered her to accompany Mrs. Stratford Gore, who affected to be scarcely able to breathe in Dublin, and who had taken a small house, or rather cottage, at Howth, for the benefit of sea-bathing, Here Geraldine also often bathed; and as she wandered among the chambers in the rocks, or, arm-in-arm with her companion, pensively traced the shore, she felt a transient interval from affliction, and seemed, when the bracing sea-breeze arose, revived and invigorated again. One fine sunset, that Geraldine had left Mrs. Stratford Gore reading a canto of Childe Harolde, while reclined, in a picturesque attitude, under one of the rocks, she wandered on, and was soon lost in reflections I 3 flections on the past and present. Suddenly the sound of two voices, in earnest conversation near her, arrested her attention; and though she did not see the speakers, she almost immediately recognized, in one of them, the fine voice of O'Melvyl, never finer than in the tremulous and hurried accents of passion.-"Impossible!" he cried-"you cannot be serious!-she dares not do it!" "On the contrary," replied another voice, which Miss Southwell knew to be that of San Carlos," she glories in it." He added something in a lower voice, in which Geraldine only distinguished the words— "An alien-an exile-an-" The last appellation was in so subdued a tone that she entirely lost it, when he was interrupted, with all the precipitancy of passion, by O'Melvyl.-"Say that again, base Italian and—” "Ha! do you threaten?" resumed the count; "and do you not remember how completely you are in my power ?" At At this moment two men issued from beneath the rocks, and Geraldine's worst fears were confirmed. Though the shades of evening were gathering in, it was impossible to mistake their figures; and if she had felt before rivetted to the spot by curiosity, fear, or some stronger motive, now equally compelled her to fly, ere she should be observed. She felt as if some instant dreadful misfortune would follow the knowledge of her having listened to them. Geraldine hardly thought herself safe, and was certainly not recovered from her agitation, when she joined Mrs. Gore; yet, upon reflection, this short scene, however mysterious, was not without comfort for her. It proved that O'Melvyl had secrets, which might, if explained, account, perhaps, even for his extraordinary behaviour to herself; she ceased, therefore, to consider him as a mere trifler, and, in restoring him to a portion of her esteem, seemed to have recovered a portion of her own existence. I 4 Lady Lady Louisa was delighted, on Geraldine's return to town, with the evident improvement in her health and spirits. Miss Southwell found, on her side, that lord O'Melvyl was by no means so constant a visitor at their house as formerly. His conduct was now certainly pretty extraordinary. With the exception of his attention to the marquis of Beaudesert, which was constant and unremitting, he seemed to have but one object in life-that of making himself conspicuous by every species of dashing absurdity. Buonaparte is said to have declared, that in the single word, "OSEZ," was compre hended the whole secret of a revolution: it seems as if it was also the talisman by which the most preposterous fashions may obtain a momentary currency. ' Lord O'Melvyl and the count di San Carlos pushed this axiom to the very verge of practicability; yet still all the eccentricities of O'Melvyl were interspersed with gleams |