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98 elevated attachment with the falsehood or the folly he has known before. However, as they say, to justify political revolutions, it was impossible such a state of things could last: and one afternoon the little fountain had its own silvery music broken by those sweetest human sounds—a lover's passionate pleading, and his mistress's whispered reply. There is an established phrase for the description of such occasions. "The conversation of lovers being always uninteresting to a third person we shall omit its detail." Contrary to the fashion of the present day, I have a great respect for the precedents left by our grandfathers and grandmothers; I shall therefore follow their example of omission. Insipidity, though, is not the real cause of such dialogues being left to die on the air, and fade from the memory. The truth is, to those in the same situation all description seems cold, tame and passionless; while to those who have never known or outlived such time, it appears overwrought, excessive, and absurd. That evening Beatrice narrated the whole history of her past life. Her love she had avowed; but her hand must depend on the delivery of the packet, and on her father.