Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 3).djvu/206

 He laughed, yet pitied, but neither desired me to hope nor despair.

'Lausane (said he, one morning, after we had been two or three weeks in Italy), would it be vastly disagreeable to you if, instead of passing two months here as we at first proposed, we returned to Lord Dunlere's, and spent them there?'

"Ah! St. Julian, (cried I) you know my heart too well to render it necessary for me to answer you."

"In short, without longer delay we returned to that mansion on which my thoughts continually dwelt. Here, in the presence of her whom my soul adored, I forgot my resolution of trying to conquer—to conceal my passion:—ah! how indeed could I do so, when in the soft glances of her eyes I sometimes fancied I saw an assurance of its being returned. At length the period for quitting her arrived—for quitting without the smallest hope of again beholding her: the most excruciating anguish filled my heart the moment it was announced, and with difficulty I concealed it.