Lodore by Mary Shelley

I saw her upon nearer view. A Spirit, yet a Woman too! A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles. Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. --Wordsworth.

The end of December had come. New year's day found and left them still in Duke Street. On the 4th of January Villiers received a letter from his uncle, Lord Maristow, entrusting a commission to him, which obliged him to go to the neighbourhood of Egham. Not having a horse, he went by the stage. He set out so late in the day that there was no chance of his returning the same night; and he promised to be back early on the morrow. Ethel had letters to write to Italy and to her aunt; and with these she tried to beguile the time. She felt lonely; the absence of Villiers for so many hours engendered an anxiety, which she found some difficulty in repressing. Accustomed to have him perpetually at her side, and without any other companion or resource, she repined at her solitude. There was his empty chair, and no hope that he would occupy it; and she sat in her little room so near to thousands, and yet so cut off from every one, with such a sense of desolation as Mungo Park might have felt in central Africa, or a shipwrecked mariner on an uninhabited island.