another and an intercepting zone, they freeze on the way, and clatter on my heart like hail, Pierre.——Thou didst not speak thus to her!'
'She is not Isabel.'
The girl gazed at him with a quick and piercing scrutiny; then looked quite calm, and spoke. 'My guitar, Pierre: thou know'st how complete a mistress I am of it; now, before thou gettest sitters for the portrait-sketcher, thou shalt get pupils for the music-teacher. Wilt thou?' and she looked at him with a persuasiveness and touchingness, which to Pierre, seemed more than mortal.
'My poor, poor Isabel!' cried Pierre; 'thou art the mistress of the natural sweetness of the guitar, not of its invented regulated artifices; and these are all that the silly pupil will pay for learning. And what thou hast cannot be taught. Ah, thy sweet ignorance is all transporting to me! my sweet, my sweet!—dear, divine girl!' And impulsively he caught her in his arms.
While the first fire of his feeling plainly glowed upon him, but ere he had yet caught her to him, Isabel had backward glided close to the connecting door; which, at the instant of his embrace, suddenly opened, as by its own volition.
Before the eyes of seated Lucy, Pierre and Isabel stood locked; Pierre's lips upon her cheek.
II
Notwithstanding the maternal visit of Mrs. Tartan, and the peremptoriness with which it had been closed by her declared departure never to return, and her vow to teach all Lucy's relatives and friends, and Lucy's own brothers, and her suitor, to disown her, and forget her; yet Pierre fancied that he knew too much in general of the human heart, and too much in particular of the
