"Will the dawn never come?" How often that question rises involuntarily to the lips, through the long night of expectation that precedes a wished-for day! Time—that is, the sense of its duration—is but another word for state,—state of mind. The length or briefness of the hour is so completely governed by the mood of one's spirits that it becomes easy for those who have learned this truth from experience to conceive a thousand years but as a day to the blessed,—a day of torture, an age to the miserable; and to comprehend that time itself can have no existence, and its computation must be replaced by state in the eternal hereafter where we shall live in the spirit only.
"Will the dawn never come?" Maurice repeated hundreds of times as that night dragged its leaden, lagging feet with the slow movement of centuries.
The dim, late London morning came at last to bring with it a new perplexity. It would be a breach of etiquette to call upon Lady Vivian at too early an hour; yet, how was Maurice to curb the headlong rush of his impatience until the prescribed period for ceremonious visits arrived? A stranger in London, it might be supposed that the numberless noteworthy objects by which he was environed might have diverted his attention; but one engrossing thought so completely filled his whole being that it rendered him blind to all the marvels of art or beauties of nature. Yet to remain imprisoned at the hotel was out of the question. He concluded to spend his morning in Hyde Park, chiefly because it was not far distant from Grosvenor Square. But the attractions of the noble park, through which he listlessly sauntered, and of the adjacent Kensington Gardens, to which he unconsciously extended his rambles, were entirely lost upon the abstracted wanderer. Grand old trees, romantic walks, delicious flowers, had no existence for him; the whole world was one great, hueless, formless void, in which he beheld nothing but the spectral image mirrored in his own soul.
He had decided not to pay his visit until after one o'clock; but, before the sun reached its meridian, he absolved himself from the propriety of waiting, and, with rapid steps, once more took his way to Lady Langdon's residence.
The door was opened by a solemn footman.
"Is Lady Vivian at home?"
"Not at home, sir."
"Is Mademoiselle de Gramont—I mean the young lady who accompanied Lady Vivian—at home?"
"Not at home, sir."