Page:The Royal Marriage.pdf/9

8 the silent sympathy of her companion. But there is an indolence about any engrossing feeling, which makes even the slightest exertion irksome. Sophie sank back in the huge gothic chair, and again her thoughts summoned before her an image only too frequent and too dear. It was the face of the young and the brilliant Count Koningsmarke that rose before her, whose recent arrival in Hanover had turned the heads of half the court. But the instinct of love is subtle; the Princess knew that she was the object of the graceful and gifted stranger; a look—a brief and hurried word—these were all that had past, but she knew she was beloved. Count Koningsmarke had many faults, the faults of an indulged youth, and a dissipated manhood; but the deep and spiritual passion he now felt, for the ﬁrst time, half redeemed the heart it occupied. He had that intellectual style of beauty whose carved features recalled those statues which are even now the type of the ideal and the divine; and, above all, he had that earnest manner and that passionate eloquence, which is most fascinating to a woman; it at once appeals to the imagination, and with her that is more than half love. It is impossible to say in what a passion, at once the most mastering and the most mysterious of our nature, has its origin. It springs into life on a look and a word. The heart may have remained untouched for years, it may have wondered at the weakness of others, for we cannot sympathise with what we do not comprehend; but not the less does the fated moment come at last. Then we believe in all we doubted before—then we yield to the sweet enchantment life never knows again. I ﬁrmly believe in love at ﬁrst sight; not that the feeling is at once known and confessed, it is only "the coming event that casts its shadow before." A new sensation has entered into existence, and, alas! for humanity—sweet, gentle as it seems—in all probability to produce a wretchedness before undreamed.