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Rh sister, dearest, you weep! Can it be that you will leave us?"

The girl raised her large eyes, yet shining with tears. Their affectionate reproach was answer enough.

"Alas!" continued he, "we are not happy as we were once wont to be; how indifferent are we grown to so much that we used to love! how altered we are, and in such brief space! No affection have we now for the snow-white doves, or the agile squirrel, in which we once took such delight; we feed them, but it is as a duty, not as a pleasure. No longer do we nurse the last glimmer in the lamp to pore over the enchanted page of Tasso. No more do we rise with the first red on the sky, and, hurrying to the green wood, call ourselves knights and enthralled princesses, and our mimic sports adventures. I keenly feel how the actual is superseding our imaginative world. Already the weight of the future is upon us; we plan and calculate, rather than hope. We find how little we have to do with our destiny, and yet, forsooth, we seek to direct it. Ever since that English stranger arrived"

A shrill, harsh voice from the farther extremity of the chamber interrupted their discourse. "English! English!—who names under my roof