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Rh gratification, and his young countryman was almost domesticated at the palazzo. Lord Mandeville, however, was not long in discovering that his friendship was not the only attraction: he was content to share it with Emily Arundel. Aware that a strong and serious attachment is one of the great influences in man's destiny, he was glad that the lot was cast, as he thought, so fortunately. Emily was a great favourite with him; and he had always viewed the attachment, at whose dénouement between her and Lorraine, Lady Mandeville meant to preside, as a somewhat foolish romance. He saw more clearly than his wife—who would only see what she liked—the entire indifference of the gentleman; and felt glad, for Emily's own sake, that a present lover should put an absent one out of her head, which seemed to him a natural consequence.

Here he, too, was wrong: he judged of one by the many. Emily's generally quiet manner and extreme gentleness gave the idea of a soft and yielding temper. There was no outward sign of a feeling which had been heightened by imagination and nurtured by solitude, till it had become the reigning thought of the present, and the sole hope of the future. The