ing around you, shall be searching into your heart, shall be striving to commune with you: and if ever Heaven allowed the laws of mortal nature to be broken for any other than its own great purposes, doubt not that its presence shall be maYou shall feel it breathe on your soul, and

nifest to you.

blend with your being.

66

Bashful, irresolute, apprehensive, the hereditary slave of prejudice and education, woman's career, from generation to generation, is one of continued self-deceit, mistrust, and restraint. But now, standing on the verge of the grave, the betrothed of death, with eyes that pierce into space, and meet on every tree the beckoning antics of the impatient fiend, the iron trammels of factitious habit fall from my mind, and I glory in declaring that I adore you. I discard the timidity of my nature and the pride of my sex, and I avow exultingly, that I linger with delight, as I slowly retrace the three little, but oh, how comprehensive words, I adore you!

"And yet, none can ever know how I have struggled with my passion, how I have schooled myself to repress it. Often in an agony of remorse have I passed the sleepless night and day in imploring the protection of Heaven; but it came not. Eve after eve, morn after morn, when I offered up my homage to my Creator, I have sworn to forget you; but I only slept to dream of you, or awakened to summon before me, incident by incident, the blissful detail of our too fleeting intercourse. Nowhere could I turn for succour. With every action of my life, with every operation of nature, some thought of you was indelibly associated. The rising and the setting sun, the green hills, the gentle gale, the moon, the stars, the scent of flowers, all were so many foes to my peace, for all served in turn but to remind me of you. My books 1 dared not open, and music was even more fertile in heart-breaking recollection.

"Strife-constant, ceaseless, internal strife is the history of my life since we parted. And yet, so potent was the effect of my early self-discipline, that during the whole of this eter

nity of suffering, nor word nor look has ever betrayed the weakness of my heart. God only knows what this effort has cost me, nor what I have endured, when I have marked you wandering beneath my window, in repressing my desire to offer you some token of my pardon and affection. Ah, relentless, vindictive, implacable, must you then have deemed me; and little did you think, while thus you dissipated health and happiness in the fruitless hope of gazing upon me, the callous, the obdurate, that I passed the equal hour in furtively watching your course, and sympathising in your anguish -that I gave you sigh for sigh, and groan for every groan.

"Bitter, oh bitter were those moments of trial! How often, then, did I repeat to myself, that but for my own insensate rashness, my guilty violence, this desolation had never been. Our world was a garden of flowers, and I wantonly laid it waste. My poor, poor brother! I may not, could not if I would, criminate his noble, honest nature; but I cannot consent to die, and suffer you to think me more culpable than I am. The tale of your early life was repeated to me in a moment of excitation, and I have since too often felt that he may unconsciously have exaggerated the errors of your conduct. Well do I now remember that he described you with an animosity of which I did not deem him capable; but, alas! I knew not then of your encounter and contest on the morn of that very eve, or I might have received his statement with the modification of suspicion. Oh, that it had pleased Heaven to have enlightened me; I might not now have to lament a brother's loss, or to turn to the east and the west, the north and the south, but find no succour.

"Think not that I would attempt to justify my conduct; I seek but to make you regard it in its proper light. No; heinous has been my crime, and fearful must be the atonement!

"So long as my poor father remained, I, too, was doomed to support the infliction of existence. But now that he has left this hapless scene, unshackled, unfettered, free as air, I reign the queen of myself; more despotic than the despot, for

he but rules another's life, while I have attained dominion of my own. I love you-I adore you-and-we are separated for ever! A red stream flows between us-it haunts me by day, and it follows me by night. Beyond it I see happiness, elysium, but I may not pass. On this side is despair; on the other, hope, love, gratitude, sympathy, all the blessings of this mortal state; but still I may not cross that small dark line of eternal disunion-for it is my brother's blood. This course alone, then, remains for my adoption -the sister dare not wed her brother's murderer, but she dares to die rather than live apart from him whom she more than idolizes.

"Now I have unlocked the inmost secrets of my heart; it is as naked before you as before my Creator. Oh, your curse is indeed upon me!-'I do live to lament that I was born!'-Harsh as was that wish, still harsher was the cause you had for framing it. I felt that I deserved it at your hands, and I wept bitter tears over my picture of the agony in which it must have originated. The rest of your letter but increased my sympathy and affection, for I saw in every line the excess of your despair, and I pardoned, nay, almost loved, that acerbity of expression which served but to prove your deep sense of your loss. To me you have ever been all that is good and oh, how I thank you with my whole soul, with all the affection of a fond daughter, and with all the fervour of a grateful woman, for your last generous, noble act of kindness to my poor father! Cease not to remember, that in these sentiments I quitted the world, and let them be a source of consolation to you.

"And now, my beloved, fare you well! Let me entreat, conjure you to school yourself to think of me without regret. Soothing as is to me the expression of these feelings, I never had revealed them, had I not thought that at some future day, you would be less unhappy in the consciousness of them, than if I had quitted this mortal career, allowing you still to suppose me the vindictive, the unjust,

the ingrate; the artful winner of your love, and the contemner of it!-Pray Heaven, that in adopting this course I may have judged correctly!

"Shed not one tear over my grave; forget me not, but think on me with serenity. Let my name be to thee an oasis in the desert of memory! And now, may the Almighty restore you to tranquillity, and ultimately to every blessing which this life can offer. Farewell again, then, beloved of my soul, and remember this last, this parting prayer-live, and be happy for my sake."

The moment I had completed the perusal of this powerful and extraordinary picture of love and devotion, of weakness and heroism, of rectitude and error, of religion and despair, I comprehended that it had never been intended to have met my eye while the writer existed; and instantly the whole machinery of her conduct arrayed itself before me. Unable longer to struggle against her passion, and the consequent disgust of life, she had resolved to die. In this determination she had written the declaration which I had just read, directing that it should not be delivered into my hands until after a stated period, when she contemplated she should no longer belong to this world of care. She had then left her home; and but for my intervention her plans would have been too accurately accomplished.

These were the thoughts that flashed across me; and then, with the exultation of a fiend, I strode up and down the chamber, the eventful letter in my hand. She was mine, then,-mine! bound to me by the ties of indivisible affection. A free career was open to me, and I might glut either my love or my hate. She adored me-had indelibly recorded her adoration—and I then grasped that proof of it which admitted of neither change nor appeal. Was she not beneath my roof, unprotected, friendless, utterly, irrevocably within my power? Might I not, then, avail myself of her weakness to effect her eternal disgrace, and thus at once

gratify the two dearest passions of my heart? Oh, no! no! worlds should not have tempted me to have adopted this course. I loved her too dearly to doom her to endless shame and misery; but my vindictive, morbid, unhappy nature, could not forgive her the anguish, the desolation, which she had caused me. At that moment, had her life been threatened, I could have cheerfully sacrificed mine to have ensured her safety; but to have preserved both, I could not have suppressed my feelings of resentment. The theory of the Orientals of two principles, the Good and the Evil, perpetually waging war in the breast of man, can alone represent the inconsistency of my sentiments.

In recurring, after this long lapse of years, to the deeds of this thrice guilty portion of my fated career, I sometimes cannot refrain from fancying that I never could have perpetrated them, unless at the time I had been the pre-ordained victim of confirmed insanity. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementit, is a maxim which frequently in my own despite occurs to me. But, as this idea brings with it a shadow of consolation, I never allow myself to entertain for I am doomed by Heaven and my own will to endure for the remainder of my life the unmitigated horrors of

it;

remorse.

While, jaded in mind and body, the prey of intestine strife, I vainly contended with the evil of my heart, repeated messages from the sick chamber informed me of the state of the invalid. Several hours thus elapsed; the evening advanced, and darkness had fallen upon the earth, ere I was gladdened by the entrance of my sister. She told me that her precious charge had been slightly delirious, and had addressed a few incoherent words to those around her, but that she had just sunk into a calm and apparently intense sleep.

Hitherto, my sister had received no explanation of the appearance of her most unexpected guest; but she now sought a solution of the mystery, and I placed the letter in

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