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50 "how love which should be such a blessing, should yet cause so much misery and disunion. Ah! Ethel does not know her own happiness. I only wonder Mr. Courtenaye did not fall in love with me. It would have completed our game of cross purposes,"—and she laughed aloud. The sound of her own laughter jarred upon her ear. "What do I laugh at?" thought she: "at wasted affection—at the consciousness that, young as I am, my heart is withered—that I look to amusement as to a resource, and to vanity as the business of an existence. Ah! love is more powerful than I deemed; for at this very moment of whom am I thinking?—my kind uncle?—no; of a stranger. It is the last time I will yield to such a weakness;" and, rising from her seat, she began to pace the room. With a struggle to escape from her own thoughts, she rang for her attendants, and, complaining of fatigue, went hastily to bed. But a crowd of heavy thoughts came to her pillow; and if, when Lord Marchmont returned, he had gazed on