Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/104

102 flight fancy was taking over the future. Hope like an angel, had arisen in her heart; and every flower of the summer sprang up beneath its feet. Youth is the French count, who takes the Yorick of Sterne for that of Shakspeare: it combines better than it calculates—its wishes are prophecies of their own fulfilment. To meet Lorraine again, with all the advantages she really possessed, and with Lady Mandeville to set those advantages in a proper light—to have him not insensible to them—to be enabled to show the perfect disinterestedness of her attachment, from his brother's marriage—all these happy conclusions were, in her mind, the work of a moment. We build our castles on the golden sand;—the material is too rich to be durable. From that day a visible change passed over Emily. She played with the children as usual; but now it was as if she entered herself into the enjoyment she gave them. Still, she was sometimes abstracted and thoughtful; but now, instead of a look of weariness and dejection, she started from her fit of absence with a beautiful flush of confusion and pleasure; and the