A TRUE STORY. 435 



and mystery of these meetings, and their necessarily lonely character, 

 were not calculated to wean their young hearts from this ill-advised 

 connection. Notwithstanding their caution, they were not able to 

 elude discovery, and the surprise and shock which it occasioned their 

 parents was not a little increased by its being- totally unexpected. 



The friendship which Sir Robert felt for Mr. Clifford was not ex- 

 tended with so lavish a hand to his children ; and if he had been the 

 tenderest and most amiable of fathers, could not have been otherwise 

 than displeased at so untoward an alliance. The very moderate pros- 

 pects of the young Clifford were not such as entitled him to think for 

 a moment of uniting himself to the heiress of the Mowbray's; and if 

 he had ever in his cooler moments entertained such a hope, it must 

 have had, even to his sanguine temperament, only the appearance of a 

 fading vision, a dream so indistinct and undefined, that the mind of 

 man could not look forward to its accomplishment without incurring 

 a suspicion of insanity. 



I have said that the most affectionate and forgiving of parents 

 would not have felt flattered by such a discovery. Judge then of the 

 effect which it produced on the mind of the haughty Mowbray. He 

 insisted on the immediate removal of young Clifford, nor could his 

 father make any reasonable objection to this requisition of parental 

 jealousy. He was destined for the law, and previously to his enter- 

 ing upon the actual study of that arduous profession it was thought fit 

 that he should graduate at one of our universities. He was forth- 

 with sent to Cambridge, and amid the mathematical sons of Granta 

 he soon forgot the sorrows of separation ; at least the pangs 'that he 

 at first suffered were deadened by the dissipation of his gayer hours, 

 or by the close reasoning which was necessary for his more serious 

 occupations. 



Not so the fair object of his vows and protestations. Man has many 

 ways of employing his mind ; many paths in which he may tread, 

 free from the seductive blandishments of love. Ambition, interest, 

 and glory, are to him such powerful incentives that the softer pas- 

 sions are merged and drowned in the more lofty sensations excited 

 by the former. But woman, excluded as she is from all these views 

 of honour and advancement, is taught by nature to cherish the more 

 amiable feelings of humanity. Her heart is more open to the ten- 

 der impressions of love, and is- so much more capable of retaining 

 them that they are scarcely ever effaced from the tablet on which 

 they have been once imprinted. He who first received her virgin 

 affections has them and holds them even in the grave. It is but too 

 true that she loves once and for ever. 



Adela had loved too intensely and too entirely to forget the object 

 on which she had bestowed her heart. She made no attempt to sof- 

 ten the dictum of her father, for she knew him to be unrelenting as 

 he was proud. " Concealment preyed on her damask cheek," and 

 she was fast sinking into the grave, a victim of unguarded passion. It 

 was some months after the eclaircissement I have mentioned that I 

 saw her, and I was told that this was the first time she had been seen 

 in public since her parting with her lover. Nay, that she was here 

 only in the faint hope of catching one glance of him for whom she 



