Pagina 274 van 1118

There was soon apparent a change in her manner, a love of reverie

and abstraction, and she no longer appeared to covet the favour

of her family; some engrossing thought had taken possession of

her mind. To be brief, she was detected one day in folding a

letter, which it had been better she had not written, and which

she was obliged to relinquish to her female attendant, who

carried it to the prince, her father. He came immediately to her

apartment with the letter in his hand, and in few but terrible

words told her, that for the present she should be confined to

her chamber, with the society only of the woman who had made the

discovery; and intimated for the future still darker punishments.

The page was dismissed, with an imperative command of silence,

and solemn threatenings of punishment should he presume to

violate it.