His step is grace, his countenance hope, his voice music!
And was such a being born only to deceive and be deceived? Was he to run
the same false, palling, ruinous career which had filled so many hearts
with bitterness and dimmed the radiancy of so many eyes? Never! The
nobility of his soul spoke from his glancing eye, and treated the foul
suspicion with scorn. Ah, would that she had such a brother to warn, to
guide, to love!
So felt the Lady Aphrodite! So felt; we will not say so reasoned. When
once a woman allows an idea to touch her heart, it is miraculous with
what rapidity the idea is fathered by her brain. All her experience, all
her anguish, all her despair, vanished like a long frost, in an instant,
and in a night. She felt a delicious conviction that a knight had at
length come to her rescue, a hero worthy of an adventure so admirable.
The image of the young Duke filled her whole mind; she had no ear for
others' voices; she mused on his idea with the rapture of a votary on
the mysteries of a new faith.
Yet strange, when he at length approached her, when he addressed her,
when she replied to that mouth which had fascinated even before it had
spoken, she was cold, reserved, constrained.
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