They did but once, and that slightly, recur to the past, and from that moment, as by a tacit understanding, true friendship between them dated.

Neither felt mortified to see that an illusion had passed away,--they were no longer the same in each other's eyes.

Both might be improved, and were so; but the Valerie and the Ernest of Naples were as things dead and gone! Perhaps Valerie's heart was even more reconciled to the cure of its soft and luxurious malady by the renewal of their acquaintance.

The mature and experienced reasoner, in whom enthusiasm had undergone its usual change, with the calm brow and commanding aspect of sober manhood, was a being so different from the romantic boy, new to the actual world of civilized toils and pleasures, fresh from the adventures of Eastern wanderings, and full of golden dreams of poetry before it settles into authorship or action! She missed the brilliant errors, the daring aspirations,--even the animated gestures and eager eloquence,--that had interested and enamoured her in the loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the tomb-like chambers of Pompeii.

For the Maltravers now before her--wiser, better, nobler, even handsomer than of yore (for he was one whom manhood became better than youth)--the Frenchwoman could at any period have felt friendship without danger.