ABSTRACT
It is sad to think how little even the most fervently loving among us are able to reproduce, to keep within recollection, the reality of the absent beloved; certain as we seem to be, living as appears the phantom which we have cherished, we yet always find, on the day of meeting, that the loved person is different from the simulacrum 152 which we have carried in our hearts. As Anne Brown sat in the carriage which was carrying her to her new home, the feeling which was strongest in her was, not joy to see Hamlin again, nor fear at entering on this new phase of existence, but a recurring shock of surprise at the voice which was speaking to her, the voice which she now recognised as that of the real Hamlin, but which was so undefinably different from the voice which had haunted her throughout those months of absence. Hamlin was seated by her side, the maid opposite. The carriage drove quickly through a network of dark streets, and then, on, on, along miles of embankment. It was a beautiful spring night, and the mists and fogs which hung over river and town were soaked with moonlight, turned into a pale-blue luminous haze, starred with the yellow specks of gas, 153 broken into, here and there, by the yellow sheen from some open hall-door or lit windows of a party-giving house: out of the faint blueness emerged the unsubstantial outlines of things – bushes, and overhanging tree-branches, and distant spectral towers and belfries.
