1826. ] My Lodgings: a Sketch from Life. 133 
on earth, live a mile or two up-stairs among the clouds. To obviate 
this annoyance, I took every opportunity of speaking of them to my 
landlady as foreigners of the first water—* probably princesses in dis- 
guise, Mrs. C—,” quoth I, “and therefore it would be politic in you to 
treat them with the most scrupulous attention.” This appeal was suc- 
cessful; and as the rest of the establishment, looking up to me as its head, 
shaped its opinions by mine, the widow and her daughter were treated 
with all suitable respect. And God knows, poor things, they had need 
of it, for, about six weeks after their arrival, the spirits of our favourite 
_ Leonora began to flag, her countenance became pale, her eyes lustreless, 
her voice low and desponding. At first we considered that she was merely 
suffering under the effects of an uncongenial climate—but soon our fears 
increased, for no visible cause appeared to countenance any such sus- 
picions, so that it was only in the strange hopelessness of her look that 
we could guess at her probable malady. And that malady was love ! 
Love in its most changless form—Love in its severest despotism-~Love 
in that mad, overwhelming energy, which leaves its conquered victim no 
chance of repose but in the grave. The way we discovered our poor little 
girl’s complaint was as follows : I had invited her mother and herself, toge- 
ther with the Lieutenant, to drink tea with me one evening, when the 
« Sun” newspaper happening to lie on the table, the soldier took it up, and, 
with the usual military instinct, turned to the Saturday’s Gazette, where, 
among other army promotions, he read aloud the exchange of a certain 
Captain H—, of 2d Foot Guards, to a regiment which had just been 
ordered off for Ireland. This was enough for Leonora; she cast but 
one look—I shall never, never forget it ;—one brief look of the most in- 
tense withering agony at her mother, and then clasping her hands upon 
her bosom, fell motionless to earth. The next day the widow, with 
tears and sobs, came down to give me an explanation of this scene, and 
to request (as her only friend) my advice. It seems that about a month 
before, Leonora was one evening crossing the Bird-cage Walk towards 
Chelsea, when just beside the barracks, a heavy shower came on, and a 
young officer, who happened to be passing at the time, politely offered 
her his umbrella; which, with.all the unhesitating simplicity of her na- 
ture, she accepted. He, of course, walked beside her, and finding that 
she was a Spaniard, and having himself served in the Peninsular war, he 
addressed her unhesitatingly in her native tongue—in that language with 
which all her earliest and fondest recollections were associated. To 
shorten a somewhat trite story, he persuaded her to give him a second 
_ —third—fourth—and even a fifth meeting, until at’ last they were in 
the habit of seeing each other every evening ;—happy, the one in her 
affections, the other in his anticipated triumph. The fastidious reader 
will here perhaps cry out, “the girl deserved her fate’ —True, in a strict 
moral sense she did: but can no allowances be made for the unsuspecting: 
simplicity of a young foreigner—for one whose sole knowledge of English 
life was drawn from the free vivacity of her ewn Spain? Let others 
think what they please upon the subject—to her it matters not, for the: 
poor girl has been long since consigned to her last home, never more to- 
feel the agony of marked neglect, or that dujl slow withering of the 
heart, whose hopes die day by day, while its sensibility reniains un-- 
blunted to the last. May heaven be more merciful to her than man! 
