Night and Morning, Book V

"_Jul_. Good lady, love him! You have a noble and an honest gentleman. I ever found him so. Love him no less than I have done, and serve him, And Heaven shall bless you -- you shall bless my ashes. " BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _The Double Marriage_.

We have been too long absent from Fanny; it is time to return to her. The delight she experienced when Philip made her understand all the benefits, the blessings, that her courage, nay, her intellect, had bestowed upon him, the blushing ecstasy with which she heard (as they returned to H -- -- , the eventful morning of her deliverance, side by side, her hand clasped in his, and often pressed to his grateful lips) his praises, his thanks, his fear for her safety, his joy at regaining her -- all this amounted to a bliss, which, till then, she could not have conceived that life was capable of bestowing. And when he left her at H -- -- , to hurry to his lawyer's with the recovered document, it was but for an hour. He returned, and did not quit her for several days. And in that time he became sensible of her astonishing, and, to him, it seemed miraculous, improvement in all that renders Mind the equal to Mind; miraculous, for he guessed not the Influence that makes miracles its commonplace.