Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/178

176 ; but there is one sensation common to all—the hurried, confused pleasure, which puts every thing else aside, of meeting. Lady Marehmont heard none of the voices around her, saw nothing of the glittering crowd; her eyes were fixed on the ground. She did not venture to look at her companion; and yet her whole being was absorbed in his. While away from him she had framed her discourse, she had arranged the many reasons of farewell, she had convinced with argument, she had subdued him with entreaty; and now that she was at his side, what did she say?—nothing! and is not this a common case? Who ever said one-half of all that seemed in absence so easy to say? The rooms at Lady Townshend's were much crowded, and there was something very odd in the quaint and strange looking figures that were assembled. Princesses, nuns, knights, pilgrims, bandits, and monks, mixed together with a superb defiance of the historical truths of costume that would nave driven an antiquary mad.