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170 be the language of affection? Philimore had asked himself. Surely not; this, with similar sentiments her letter breathed, were widely opposed to those she had hitherto expressed, and which her actions had manifested towards him. "How greatly have I deceived myself," thought he, "in imagining I was beloved!" And what then remained for him but to leave the country, to quit the Hermitage, the rejected lover of her whose image was too deeply engraved on his heart ever to be erased!

Such had been the tenor of his reflections since he had perused the letter of Oriana; no wonder then that, when she with her family entered the Doctor's library, such a visible alteration was perceived; it was then that a crowd of conflicting images suddenly rushed upon his brain: he was the next moment absorbed; the whole chain of idea, thought, and recollection faded, and he exhibited a picture of mental stupor and abstraction, dreadful for Oriana to contemplate! producing in her, as from magnetic attraction, correspondent emotions, which with the utmost difficulty she restrained. In following her natural dictates, she would instantly have revoked every sentence of that cruel letter which, by the advice of Rosilia, she had written.

Roused from that lethargy of intense sadness by