Love has its fevers, its recoveries, and its relapses.

The patient--nay even his nurse and his doctor, if he has taken to himself such officers in his distress--may believe the malady quite cured--the passion burnt out--the flame extinct--even the smoke quite over, when a little chance puff of rivalry blows the white ashes off, and, lo! the old liking is still smouldering.

But this was not Devereux's case.

He remembered when his fever--not a love one--and his leave of absence at Scarborough, and that long continental tour of hers with Aunt Rebecca and Gertrude Chattesworth, had carried the grave, large-eyed little girl away, and hid her from his sight for more than a year, very nearly _two_ years, the strange sort of thrill and surprise with which he saw her again--tall and slight, and very beautiful--no, not _beautiful_, perhaps, if you go to rule and compass, and Greek trigonometrical theories; but there was an indescribable prettiness in all her features, and movements, and looks, higher, and finer, and sweeter than all the canons of statuary will give you.
How prettily she stands! how prettily she walks! what a sensitive, spirited, clear-tinted face it is! This was pretty much the interpretation of his reverie, as Colonel Stafford's large and respectable party obligingly vanished for a while into air.

Is it sad?
I think it _is_ sad--I don't know--and how sweetly and how drolly it lighted up; at that moment he saw her smile--the pleasant mischief in it--the dark violet glance--the wonderful soft dimple in chin and cheek--the little crimson mouth, and its laughing coronet of pearls--and then all earnest again, and still so animated! What feminine intelligence and character there is in that face!--'tis pleasanter to me than conversation--'tis a fairy tale, or--or a dream, it's so interesting--I never know, you see, what's coming--Is not it wonderful?
What is she talking about now ?--what does it signify ?--she's so strangely beautiful--she's like those Irish melodies, I can't reach all their meaning; I only know their changes keep me silent, and are playing with my heart-strings.
Devereux's contemplation of the animated _tete-a-tete_, for such, in effect, it seemed to him at the other side of the table, was, however, by no means altogether pleasurable.