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66 "And what the young nobles of France may say to your dark eyes!" added Marie.

"Is it true," said Guido, who had just entered, "that you are about to leave Italy—and us?"

"Yes," answered Marie, "we are like the knights of old, about to go forth and conquer."

She paused, for she felt rebuked by the earnest and melancholy gaze of the young sculptor. Marie loved him as much as it was in her nature to love—more than she suspected herself. It was with a flushed cheek and glittering eye that she let him draw her towards the window, while she listened to a passion pleaded with all the fervour of the South, and made beautiful by an imagination which turned all it touched to poetry. True it is that the innate buoyancy of the as yet unbroken spirit soon rebounds from the pressure of sorrow; nevertheless, it is in youth that sorrow is most keenly felt. Time, of which so little has been measured, seems so very long—we soon learn the worldly lesson, that friends are easily replaced, and still more easily forgotten. We become accustomed to change—we grow hardened to regret—and in after-years look back with surprise, nay, even disdain, at the poignant grief with which we first parted from our early companions. We never again form those open, eager, and confiding attachments.