considered it, and fancied it even more valuable and delightful than it really was, with the bright hope of its appearing so to the person for whom it was destined.  Thus with her toilet, Laura let her maid take as much pains as she would; and when she saw in the glass as lovely a face and form as that instrument of vanity ever reflected, and could not help acknowledging that it was so, she smiled with a pleasure that she had never felt before, to think that beauty also was a part of the dowry of bright things which she was to bring to him she loved.

Though the maid was somewhat longer with her mistress’s toilet than usual, delaying it for a little, perhaps, with a view of obtaining farther information than Lady Laura was inclined to give her, upon all the events of the two or three days preceding, yet Laura was down in the saloon some time before the dinner-hour, and she looked not a little anxiously for the coming of Wilton.  She was not inclined to chide him for delay, for she knew that it would be no fault of his if he were not there early.  The Duke, not knowing that she had risen, had gone out; but he, too, had left her heart happy in the morning when they parted, by answering her, when she told him of the invitation she had given, with such encomiums of her deliverer, of his manner, of his character, of his person, and of his mind, that Laura was almost tempted into hopes more bright than the reality.

Notwithstanding all delays Wilton did at length arrive, and that, too, before the Duke returned, so that Laura had time to tell him how happy her father’s praises of him had made her, and to insinuate hopes, though she did not venture absolutely to express them.  Her words, and her manner, and her look, in consequence of all that had been passing in her mind during the morning, were more warm, more tender than they had even been before; and who could blame Wilton, or say that he presumed, if he, too, gave way somewhat more to the warm and passionate love of his own heart, than he had dared to venture during their preceding intercourse?

Laura did not blame him.  She blushed, indeed, as he pressed her to his heart, though he was the man whom she loved best on earth; but yet, though she blushed, she felt no wrong:  she felt, on the contrary, the same pure and endearing affection towards him that he felt for her, and knew that gentle pressure to be but an expression, on his part, of the same high, holy, and noble love with which she could have clung to his bosom in any moment of danger, difficulty or distress.

At length the Duke made his appearance; and eagerly grasped Wilton’s hand in both his own, thanking him a thousand and a thousand times for restoring to him his beloved child, and telling him that no words or deeds could ever express his gratitude.  Indeed, so much more eager, so much more demonstrative, was his whole demeanour, than that of his daughter, that he blamed Laura for coldness in expressing what she felt only too warmly for words; and until dinner was announced, he continued talking over all that had occurred, and inquiring again and again into each particular.