“Why will you sing that old-fashioned song, dear Annie, when you have so many much better suited to your voice?” expostulated Reginald de Vere, as he led the young songstress from her harp to a more retired seat. “I do not like your throwing away so much power and sweetness on a song which, of all others, I hate the most.”

“Do not say so, Reginald. You are not usually fastidious, or I would say, had that sweet melody Italian words instead of English, you would acknowledge its beauty, and feel it too.”

“Perhaps so, as it is not the melody, but the words I quarrel with—‘Home, sweet home.’ What charm has home ever had for me? Change the words, dear Annie, English or Italian, I care not, only remove all association of home, and I will learn to love it more.”

“Nay, Reginald; to banish such association would be to banish its greatest charm. One day you, too, may feel its truth.”

“Never, never!” he answered, passionately; “there is a blighting curse around me, which it were worse than folly to resist. I must toil on, lonely, and unblessed by one sweet tie of home—seeking for no love, and receiving none—isolated in a world! There are many others whose destiny is the same. Bound by the iron chain of fate, he is but a madman who would seek to break it.”

“Destiny—fate! I thought you had long ere this banished their baneful influence,” said Annie, in a tone of mild reproach.

“From your ear, my gentle friend, because I saw you loved not their expression; but not from my own heart. Yet you, too, believe all things to be pre-ordained; that not a sparrow falls to the ground unmarked. Then, why so start at me—is not our creed the same?”

“It cannot be, Reginald. I am not wise enough to know wherein the difference lies, I can only judge from effects; and when they are so opposed, I fancy the cause must be so also. I do believe that all things are ordained, but yet I am no fatalist.”

“Will you try and explain the distinction, for your words seem somewhat contradictory.”

“I fear they do,” she replied, simply; “and I am over bold to speak on this weighty subject at all. Your creed appears to me to consist in this: that before your birth, your path was laid down—your destiny fixed; that you are, in consequence, bound in chains, enclosed in walls, from which no effort of your own will can enable you to escape; that you must stand the bursting of the thunder-cloud—for you have no force or energy to seek shelter, no free will to choose—swayed by an irresistible impulse, and, consequently, not a responsible being. Such seems to me the creed of a fatalist.”

“And you are right. Now, then, for yours; less difficult, I should imagine, to explain, than that in which you have no interest.”

“I differ from you, Reginald. It is comparatively easy to define the subject of a passing thought or an hour’s study; but that which we feel, feel to our inmost soul, is not so easily clothed in words. I believe that an eye of love is ever watching over me—a guiding arm is ever round me; that nothing can happen to me, unless willed for my good by my Father in heaven; but I do not believe my lot in life marked out before I saw the light. Such a creed at once changes the law of love into a dark and iron-bound necessity, from which my whole soul revolts. Where would be the comfort of prayer in such a case—the blessedness of pouring forth one’s whole soul in the hour of affliction? for how could prayer avail us were our lot marked out?”

“And do you think prayer ever does? Do you believe that you are answered?”

“I do, indeed, dear Reginald; not always as our own will would dictate, but as a loving Father knows it best. I was not answered as my heart implored when my only parent was taken from me; but I was answered in the strength that was granted me to feel that he was happy, and God’s will kinder and better than my own. I am not here because it is my destiny, but because it is better for me than the calm and quiet life I have hitherto enjoyed.”

“Your creed is indeed that of a gentle, loving woman, Annie,” said her companion, more playfully; but he smiled not, for he knew how chillingly a smile will fall on young enthusiasm. “But it is too visionary, too ethereal, for cold-hearted man; perhaps not for some, but for me there are no such dreams. My heart was once full of hope and faith, and all things bright, and fond, and beautiful; but now crushed, blighted, trampled on, how may it dream again? but this is folly,” and with a strong effort he subdued emotion, and spoke more calmly. “Let us talk of something else. You alluded but now to your change of life, and I thought, sadly. Are you not happy?”

“I shall be in time, Reginald,” answered Annie, on whose fair sweet face a shade had flitted at her companion’s bitter words. “All are kind to me. My mother was Lord Ennerdale’s favourite niece, and he loves me for her sake, and so pets me that I cannot but love him most dearly.”

“And Lady Emily?”

“I shall learn to love as soon as she will let me. I fancy she thinks me but a simple romantic girl and I have not courage to undeceive her—that I can love and reverence other things besides poetry; but it is the change of circumstances that sometimes makes me sad. Clair Abbey is so far removed from Luscombe Cottage, that time has not yet reconciled me to the great change.”

“Time is slow in effecting changes in you, Annie; yet ere we meet again, trust me, you will have learned to love Clair Abbey, or changed it for another home as high in sounding, and yet more dear.”

“Changed it ere we meet again? What can you mean, Reginald?” said Annie, startled yet more by his tone than by his words, but she was not answered; for Reginald turned away directly he had spoken, his attention called by Lord Ennerdale; and another quadrille being formed, her hand was claimed, and she was led off almost unconsciously—so strangely was she preoccupied—to join it.

There had been nothing in the quiet yet earnest conversation of Reginald de Vere and Annie Grey to cause remark amongst the light-hearted group who were that night assembled in Lord Ennerdale’s hospitable halls. They had been intimate from childhood, and as Annie was almost a stranger to all present, and merely regarded as a simple country girl hardly emerged from childhood, no one was surprised that she should prefer Reginald’s society; though there were some young men who, attracted by the timid yet intelligent style of her beauty, half envied De Vere the privileges of intimacy which he so evidently enjoyed. Annie’s place seemed not amidst the followers of fashion; the long, rich, chesnut hair owned no law but that of nature, and flowed at will from her pale, high brow over a neck and shoulders, whose exquisite form and whiteness were displayed to advantage by the simple fashion of her plain black dress; the eye so “darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,” the fair soft cheek ever varying in colour, revealed every thought and feeling that stirred within. The world’s lesson of concealment and reserve she had not yet learned, for living in perfect retirement with a kind and judicious father, of whom she was the idol, her enthusiasm had been regulated, not chilled, and every high and poetic sentiment raised up to and purified in the only rest for such minds—the religion of the Bible and of Nature. Her life had passed in a small cottage on the banks of Windermere, diversified only by occasional visits to an old relation in Scotland; where, in fact, the first six months of her mourning had been passed. And there, had it not been for one cogent reason, she would have preferred remaining, as more congenial to her taste and feelings, than the form and grandeur which she imagined must surround the dwelling of an Earl.

Lord Ennerdale and his family had often sought to draw Sir Edward Grey from his seclusion, anxious to notice his child; but fearing to disturb Annie’s tranquil happiness by an introduction to a mode of life and pleasures which her very limited fortune must prohibit her enjoying, he had invariably declined these solicitations. Yet when Lord Ennerdale, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, made a rapid journey from London to Luscombe Cottage, purposely to soothe his dying hours by the assurance that his Annie was amply, even richly provided for, and therefore there could be no objection to her making Clair Abbey her future home, Sir Edward placed his weeping child in the arms of her aged uncle, and died with a prayer for both upon his lips.

But much as Annie loved and venerated her father, it was scarcely so much his last wish as the restlessness of her own heart, which, even while she preferred the simple mode of living at Kelmuir, yet reconciled her to a residence at Clair Abbey. She was restless because her quondam playmate and chosen friend, Reginald de Vere, was far away in his own most wretched home, with none to sing or smile him into peace, or cautiously and gently argue away his fits of morbid sensitiveness or overwhelming gloom. That Lord Ennerdale not only sympathised in the young man’s causes of depression, but loved his better qualities, admired his talents, and regretted his failings, was sufficient to excite the warm affections of his great-niece towards him. No spell is so powerful in opening the heart as sympathy, with regard to the character of those we love.

Clair Abbey’s great attraction, then, to Annie Grey was, that there she should constantly see Reginald; his concluding words, therefore, had both startled and pained her; but she vainly waited for their solution. She looked earnestly for Reginald to return to her; but he was constantly engaged in apparently earnest conversation with one or other of Lord Ennerdale’s guests. She was too guileless to believe he shunned her merely because he failed in courage to tell her more.

The evening closed at length; and passing along the corridor leading from the library to the stairs, a well-known step suddenly sounded behind her, and the voice of Reginald de Vere called her by name.

“I thought you intended to retire without even wishing me good night,” she said, playfully, her spirit rallying with his appearance. “What do you mean, sir, by such treatment? Be better behaved to-morrow, and I will be merciful, and forgive.”

“You must forgive me to-night, dearest Annie; for to-morrow will see me many miles on my road to Portsmouth, thence speedily to embark for Spain.”

“Portsmouth—Spain!” repeated the bewildered girl; and her hand so trembled, that the lamp she held dropped from it, and was instantly extinguished.

“Yes, Annie, to Spain!” he answered, struggling for calmness. “I am of age now; poor, but not so utterly dependent as I have been. My father’s house I will never enter more. You start, Annie, but do not—do not condemn me. Judge me by no reasoning but that of your own kind gentle heart. I can bear no more than that which I have borne. Boyhood must submit to a parent’s tyranny; but manhood owns no such law. You know how I would have loved my father, and how he has spurned me. Still I lingered, vainly striving to elicit one softer feeling, hoping—idiot that I was—that he would yet love me. But the dream is over! He drew the reins still tighter, and so snapped them; there is a measure to endurance even in a son. Do not weep thus, Annie,” he continued, conquering his own emotion to soothe hers, and passing his arm round her, as he had so often done in earlier years, when as a brother he had soothed her griefs and shared her joys. “I will not burden you with the final cause of my present resolution. I have neither means nor influence to tread the path to which my inmost soul aspires; and to toil for lingering years behind a merchant’s desk or tradesman’s counter my spirit will not bear. I have obtained a commission amongst the brave fellows now about to join General Mina in his gallant defence of the young queen; and with him these restless yearnings may be stilled in the activity of martial service, or the quiet of the grave. And who will mourn for me?” he continued, rapidly and bitterly; “who, in the wide world, will think of me, or shed one tear for me, save thine own sweet self? Oh, Annie, speak to me! Tell me you will think of me sometimes. I know there will be many, very many, to supply my place to you; but, oh, who will ever be to me as you have been?”

“And yet you have decided on this plan, endured more than ever, and told me not a word. Reginald, was this kind?” she said, struggling with the tears that nearly suffocated her.

“You were in grief already, Annie; how might I ask your sympathy in mine? I know it never was refused me. I know it would not be, even in your own sorrow; but oh, Annie, I felt if I waited to look on you again, I should fail in courage to leave England. Yet why should I linger? Changed as your prospects are, loved as you will be by those so much more deserving, what could I be to you?”

“Reginald!” murmured poor Annie, wholly unconscious of the nature of her own feelings, yet unable to utter another word.

“I know you will not forget me, Annie, dearest Annie, your nature is too good, too kind, too truthful for such change; but, fated as I am, how dare I ask for, hope for more than a sister’s love? Say you will sometimes think of me, love me as—as a brother, Annie, darling! and life will not be so wholly desolate.”

Her reply was almost inarticulate, and passionate words rose to Reginald’s lips, but they were not spoken. He led her to the door of her apartment without another word, wrung both her hands in his, bade “God bless her!” and was gone. Annie stood for a few minutes as if stunned; mechanically she loosed the wreath of white rosebuds from her hair, the fastening of her dress, which seemed to stifle her very breath, and then she sunk on her knees beside the bed, and the hot tears gushed forth; and long, long she wept, as that young guileless girl had never wept before.

Reginald de Vere was the youngest son of a private gentleman of moderate fortune, residing in a populous city in the north of Yorkshire. It is not necessary to dilate on feelings which Reginald’s own words but too painfully portrayed; the “iron rule” of tyranny is best described in the effect which it produces. The Calvinistic principles of the elder De Vere found no softening of their natural austerity in the acidity and moroseness of his temper; the evil had been increased by his union with a young Spaniard—lively, frivolous, and a Roman Catholic. How this marriage had ever come about, nobody succeeded in discovering. Strange unions there are, but seldom between such antipodes in character and feeling as were Mr. and Mrs. De Vere. Their large family grew up amidst all the evils of domestic dissension, and its subsequent misery—a father’s unjustifiable tyranny, and a mother’s as blamable weakness. Basil de Vere sought to instil his peculiarly stern doctrines in the minds of his children; his wife prayed, in their hearing, that they might be saved from such cold, comfortless belief; they shrunk from the one, and learned no religion from the other. To shield them from the father’s tyranny, the mother taught them deceit, lavished on them weak indulgences, which were to be forfeited if ever revealed. Ever witnessing and suffering the effects of dissension, what affection, what harmony could exist between themselves? The ill effects of this training were more discernible in some of their matured characters than in others; some pursued an honest course, as soon as their departure from their father’s house permitted the influence of their better qualities, but these were mostly dwelling in foreign lands; some had married with, some without his consent; and in his old age Basil de Vere found himself master of a deserted hearth, with none of his once blooming family beside him but one, and that one was Reginald. The weak indulgence of his mother had never softened for Reginald the tyranny of his father. She died in giving him birth, and he had to battle through his unhappy childhood alone. Shrinking almost in agony from his father’s voice, yearning, with all the clinging confidence of childhood, for love, but finding none, he turned in loathing from the continued scenes of discord which characterised his home. He spurned with contemptuous indignation offers of indulgence and concealment, to act as he saw others do, and thus constantly drew upon himself the enmity of his more wily brothers and sisters. He shrunk, in consequence, more and more within himself, striving to keep peace with his father, but in vain; for De Vere often raged at his children without knowing wherefore, and the calm, dignified bearing of his youngest son would chafe him into greater fury than palpable offence. But there were seeds of virtue, aye, of the “nobility of genius,” in the disposition of Reginald, that bloomed and flourished despite the unhealthy soil and blighting atmosphere in which he moved; perhaps the kindly notice of Sir Edward Grey assisted their development. The pale, silent, suffering boy had appealed irresistibly to his kind heart, and for Reginald’s sake he condescended to make acquaintance with his father.

As long as they remained in Yorkshire, Sir Edward permitted Reginald to share much of the instruction which he himself bestowed upon his Annie; a kindness so delicately and feelingly bestowed, that Reginald by slow degrees permitted his whole character to display itself to Sir Edward, and allowed himself to feel that, with so kind a friend and so sweet a companion, he was not utterly alone. Even when Sir Edward removed to Windermere their intercourse continued; for there was ever a room prepared and a warm welcome for Reginald, who turned to that cottage as a very Eden of peace and love.

As Reginald increased in years, felt more fully his own powers, and through Sir Edward’s friendly introductions associated with other families, his morbid feelings did not, as the baronet had fondly hoped, decrease, but rather strengthened, in the supposition that his fate alone was desolate. He saw happy homes and kindly hearts; no exertion, no effort, no sacrifice could make such his, and he believed an iron chain of fate was round him, dooming him to misery. The kindness of Sir Edward, of Lord Ennerdale, and others, only deepened the vain, wild yearnings for home affections—the peace, the confidence of home. A peculiarly fine organization of mind and an acute perception of character caused him to shrink with pain from general notice. The talented and gifted he admired at a distance, feeling intuitively that such would be his chosen friends; yet, from a sense of inferiority, refusing to come forward and permit his fine talents to be known; at the same time shrinking from the common herd, convinced that amongst them he should meet with neither sympathy nor appreciation. A happy home would have been all in all for Reginald; there the incipient stirrings of genius would have been fostered into bloom, and the morbid feelings too often their accompaniment regulated into peace.

The death of Sir Edward Grey and the future destination of his daughter were, however, the final cause of his determination to leave England. He knew it not himself; and if a light did flash upon the darkness, it only deepened the gloom around him, by the conviction that his doom was ever to love alone. More and more earnestly he sought to soften his father’s temper, even to conquer his own repugnance to the path of life his parent might assign him; but in vain. To enumerate all the petty miseries this struggle cost him would be impossible. The mind rises purified and spiritualized from great sorrows; but there is no relief from the trial of an unhappy home, no cure for the wounds of words. If domestic love and peace be ours, we can go forth with a firm heart and serene mind to meet the trials of the world; alas! alas! for those who have no such haven, no such stay!

Never did Reginald De Vere make a greater mistake than in the supposition that a military life would bring him the happiness for which his parched soul so thirsted. He could not associate the favourite pastime of his childhood, carving in wood, stone, or whatever material came first to hand, with the feverish yearning for exertion and excitement, which possessed his whole being. He could not feel that the one sprang from the other, or rather that the power which urged the former was secretly working in his mind, and causing an utter distaste for all mechanical employment. He was too unhappy to examine the source of his restlessness, and knew no one who could explain it for him.

Lord Ennerdale and his sons were all men of worth and talent, and firm encouragers of art and literature; but not themselves children of genius, they failed in the subtle penetration which could discover its embryo existence. Had Sir Edward lived he would have seen further; but still all his friends had dissuaded Reginald from entering on a military career, but he was firm; and in less than a week after his agitated parting with Annie, a fair wind was rapidly bearing him to the shores of Spain.

Days and weeks passed, and Annie Grey sought with persevering effort to regain her former calm and happy temperament; and she succeeded so far as to conceal from her relatives the secret of her heart. The agony of that parting moment had transformed her, as by some incomprehensible spell, from the child to the woman; and so sudden had been the transition, that she felt for days a stranger to herself. Reginald had always been dear to her, but she knew not, imagined not how dear, until that never-to-be-forgotten evening; his words returned to her again and again, and sad, desponding as they were, she would not have lost one of them. She who had been so constantly active, flitting like a spirit from one favourite employment to another, now seemed to live but on one feeling; but her mind was too well regulated to permit its unrestrained indulgence. Young as she was, dependent on herself alone for guidance in this new and absorbing state of being, thrown in quite a new position for luxury and wealth, as a cherished member of her uncle’s family, yet her character, instead of deteriorating, matured, uniting all the outward playfulness of the child with the inward graces of the woman.

Lord Ennerdale’s domestic circle formed a happy contrast to that of the ascetic Basil De Vere. His children were all married except his eldest son, Lord St. Clair, and eldest daughter, Lady Emily; but the ties of family had never been broken, and happy youth and blooming childhood were almost always round the earl. With all these Annie was speedily a favourite; and easily susceptible of kindness and affection, Clair Abbey soon became endeared to her as home.

By a strange contradiction, Annie’s interest and affection were, however, excited the strongest towards the only member of Lord Ennerdale’s family who retained reserve towards her. What there was in Lady Emily St. Clair to attract a young and lively girl, Annie herself might have found it difficult to define; for not only her appearance, but her manners were against her. Stiff, cold, even severe, she usually appeared; and when she would at times relax, and seem about to enter with warmth and kindness into Annie’s studies or pursuits, she would suddenly relapse into coldness and reserve. Sometimes, when eagerly conversing with Lord St. Clair, on the exquisite beauty of nature, or of some favourite poem, when the spirit of poetry breathed alike from her eyes and from her lips, Annie would catch the eye of Lady Emily fixed upon her sadly and pityingly; or if she smiled, the smile was peculiar, it might be even satirical; yet she was never satirical in words, nor did it seem in character—too feelingly alive to the dictates of kindness ever willingly to inflict a wound. To discover her real character was difficult; Annie judged more by her habits than her words. Lady Emily never said that her love of flowers amounted to a passion, that to have them around her in their freshness, to seek them alike from the garden and the wild, to collect, dry, and arrange them in such tasteful groups and such brilliancy of colouring, that the choicest paintings looked dim beside them, was her favourite pleasure, but Annie was ever ready with some newly discovered plant, or the moss and weed she needed—ever the first to remove the dying buds, and supply their place around her boudoir with the freshest and fairest she could select. Lady Emily never spoke of poetry, never acknowledged that she could either admire or enter into it; but there were extracts in her writing, attached sometimes to drawings, sometimes to her books of flowers, that betrayed such a refinement of taste, and acute perception of the pure, the beautiful, and the spiritual, in nature and in man, that Annie suspected she was herself a poet; but yet how could she reconcile the unimpassioned coldness of her usual mood with the light and life of poetry? Yet though fairly puzzled, Annie so judiciously assisted her researches, that Lady Emily often wondered how a mark could come so exactly in the place she wished, when the thought, for whose echo she looked, had been breathed to none; but even had these attentions escaped her notice, it must indeed have been an icy heart to withstand the sweetness of Annie’s manner; whenever her cousin’s mood was irritable, her temper somewhat ruffled, there seemed a magic around Annie not only to bear with irritation, but to reconcile the subject of that irritation to herself and all around her; and when so languid and weak as really to be ill, though she would never allow it, who so active as Annie to prevent all annoyance to the invalid, or interfere with the only pursuits she could enjoy? Yet no show of affection acknowledged these attentions; but by very slow degrees the Miss Grey changed into Anne, and finally into the pretty denomination by which she was always addressed; and the smile and tone with which she spoke to her, satisfied the orphan that she had not worked in vain.

Even if Annie’s conduct had failed to rivet the notice of Lady Emily, it had gained for her the interest and sincere affection of another. Lord St. Clair was devotedly attached to his sister, and all who had the good sense to appreciate her were sure to obtain his esteem; then in the prime of life, he foresaw no danger in his intimate association with and admiration of his young cousin, a girl but just seventeen; and it was a pleasure to him to draw her out, and repay by every kindness on his part her attention to his sister. A disappointment when very young had caused him to remain single. “I do not say I shall never marry,” he often said, in answer to his father’s solicitations on the subject; “for then I should consider myself bound not to do so, however my heart might dictate; but it is unlikely.”

Annie Grey had not, however, been domiciled many months in Clair Abbey, before Lord St. Clair’s sentiments on this subject underwent some change.

From the time of Reginald’s departure the public journals became suddenly endowed with an interest to Annie, equal to that of the most ardent politician. The disturbed state of Spain, the constant marchings and counter-marchings of General Mina’s army, prevented any regular communication from Reginald; once or twice she had heard from him direct, and treasured indeed were those letters, honourably as the young man kept to his resolution, never by one word to draw Annie into an engagement, or even an avowal that she returned his love. In the papers she often read his name among the bravest and most daring of the British soldiers. One anecdote, officially reported and communicated to Lord Ennerdale, afforded her still dearer food for fancy. The service in which he was engaged was exposed to all the horrors of civil warfare; slaughter and desolation followed in the train of both armies. Young De Vere, at the head of a picked band, had thrown himself in the very midst of a mÊlÉe, determined on saving the unoffending women and children, and aged peasants of the opposing party, all of whom were about to be sacrificed to the misguided rage of the royal troops; the village was in flames, and the peasants, neutral before, swore to be avenged. The exertions of the young Englishman, however, worked on both parties; he calmed the excited spirits of his own men, and promised protection and safety to the oppressed. One group particularly attracted him; a young mother, clasping an infant tightly to her breast, and two fine boys, twining their arms round her, as to protect her with their own lives. Reginald did not know that it was her infant he had saved from a brutal death, but his look was arrested by the intense feeling glistening in her large dark eyes, and by the impotent passion of her eldest boy, who, clenching a huge stick, vowed he would join his father, who was a Carlist soldier, and revenge the insults offered to his mother. De Vere jestingly laid his hand on the stripling’s shoulder, declaring he was a young rebel and his prisoner. The agonized scream of the poor mother changing on the instant into the wildest accents of gratitude, as she recognised in Reginald her baby’s preserver, and to the earnest supplication that he would send them on in safety, removed all feelings of mere jest. Reginald soothed her fears, and selecting a guard of his own countrymen, on whom he could depend, sent her and her children under their care to the outposts of the Carlist camp. General Mina smiled sadly when this anecdote was told him. “The age of chivalry is over, my young friend,” he said, mournfully. “Your act was kind and generous, but I fear of little service. The Carlists are not likely to check their career of devastating warfare because we have spared one insignificant village; nor will you have any demand upon their favour should you unfortunately fall into their hands.”

“Chivalry and its romance may be over,” thought Annie, as again and again her mind reverted to its one fond theme. “But my father once told me ‘a deed can never die;’ and, even if indeed it were to do no good, surely his motives will meet with the appreciation and admiration they deserve; there must be some among the good and noble to do him justice.”

How the young heart revels in every proof, however trifling, on the worth of him it loves. The restlessness of a scarcely acknowledged passion merged into a species of glowing happiness, the basis of which Annie might have found it difficult to define. In its indulgence she forgot the distance between them, the darkening aspect of his future, the despondency breathing in his last farewell—forgot all but the passionate words, “Who will be to me as you have been?” And what will so elevate the character and purify the heart, and shed such sweet rosy flowers over every thought, and act, and feeling, as the first fresh feelings of all-hoping, all-believing love? Annie’s beauty, matured beneath the magic of such dreams, excited universal admiration; but the young girl knew it not.

“No breakfast for loiterers!” exclaimed Lord St. Clair, playfully holding up his hand, as Annie sprang through an open French window into the breakfast-room one lovely summer morning, her cottage bonnet thrown back, her luxuriant hair somewhat disordered, her cheek and eye bright with health and animation, and laughing gaily at Lord St. Clair’s threat.

“Here has Emily been looking starch and prim for the last half-hour, thinking unutterable things of the folly and romance which can be the only reason of young ladies’ early wanderings in the lonely districts about Keswick Lake. Ah, you little fox, prepared with a bribe to ward off the weight of her displeasure,” he said, as Annie laid the fruit of her researches, a rare and exquisite plant, on the table by her cousin, and Lady Emily half smiled.

“And there’s my father in a complete fever fearing that his blooming little niece had been carried off, or eaten up by one of the wild men or monsters of the mountains, and threatening to search for her himself, directly after breakfast.”

“Thank you, my dear, kind uncle,” replied Annie, gaily, bending over Lord Ennerdale to kiss his forehead. “Never be anxious about me. I have suffered no further inconvenience than extreme hunger, which I satisfied at Nanny’s cottage, by a slice of her brown bread and a cup of warm milk. No romance in that, Lord St. Clair, at least.”

“A fortunate occurrence for you, as it may save you from a lecture on the impropriety of indulging love-lorn dreams in solitude. Why, Annie, you are actually blushing; if it were not an utter impossibility for romantic young ladies to feel hungry, I should say your very looks pleaded guilty. Look at her, Emily—you had better begin.”

“No, I thank you, Henry; I never give lectures, even when deserved, in public,” was his sister’s quiet reply.

“Well, the offence brings with it its own punishment, for here come the contents of the postman’s bag, and so a truce to our sage converse; and you, Miss Annie, must eat your breakfast in meditative silence.”

“Or in perusing what she likes better. Here, my little politician; your eyes are pleading, though your lips are silent,” said Lord Ennerdale, gaily throwing to her a packet of newspapers without opening them.

“You are much too young to be a politician; besides, I hate women to dabble in politics, so give me a better reason for being the first reader of all the papers, or you shall not have them,” interposed Lord St. Clair, keeping firm hold of the packet, which he had caught.

“On my honour, I never read a word of politics,” replied Annie, half playfully, half eagerly, but blushing deeply as she met Lord St. Clair’s penetrative glance. He relinquished them with a half sigh, and bent over his despatches. Silence ensued for several minutes, each seemingly engrossed with his occupation. Lady Emily was the first to move, and after carefully sorting and arranging the flowers Annie had brought her, was about to leave the room.

“Annie, my dear child! what is the matter?” she exclaimed, in a tone which electrified her father and brother, so utterly was it unlike her usually measured accents; and startled out of all stiffness and dignity, she was at the poor girl’s side in an instant. Annie’s cheek, lips, and brow were cold and colourless as marble, and there was such rigid agony imprinted on every feature, that Lady Emily well-nigh shuddered as she gazed. “Speak to me, Annie, love! What is it? Try and speak, dearest; do not look at me with such a gaze,” she continued, as Annie slowly raised her eyes, which were bloodshot and distended, and fixed them on her face; she evidently tried to speak, but only a gasping cry escaped, and that terrible agony was lost for a time in an unconsciousness so deep that it almost seemed of death.

Lord St. Clair stood paralysed, but then he snatched up the fatal paper, and one glance sufficed to tell him all, all that he had suspected, all that for his own happiness he had feared; but he could only think of Annie then, and perceiving how ineffectual were all the usual efforts to restore animation, he threw himself on horseback, and never rested till he had found and dragged back with him the medical attendant of the family, whose skill was finally successful. Annie woke from that blessed relief of insensibility to a consciousness of such fearful suffering, that as she lay in the perfect stillness enjoined by the physician, she felt as if her brain must reel, and fail beneath it. It was not alone the death of him she loved, that the idol of her young affections was lost to her for ever, but it was the horrid nature of his fate which had so appalled her. In the gallant defence of a royal fort he had been left almost alone, all his companions falling around him; severely wounded, and overpowered by numbers, he was taken by the Carlists, dragged to their camp, and twenty-four hours afterwards shot, with other ill-fated men, literally murdered in cold blood. Three times Annie’s eyes had glared on the paragraph, reading again and again the list of the unfortunate men who had thus perished, as if Reginald’s name could not be amongst them; alas! it was there, pre-eminent, from the courage, the youth, and the official rank of the bearer. And in that dreadful stillness the whole scene rose before her, vivid as reality—ghastly figures flitted before her; and then she saw Reginald as they parted; and then full of life and excitement in the field; and then covered with blood and wounds. She seemed to see him bound and kneeling for the fatal stroke, and the shot rung in her ears, clear, sharp, and strangely loud, till she could have shrieked from the bewildering agony: she tried to banish the vision, to escape its influence, but it gained strength, and force, and colouring, and before midnight Lady Emily watched in grief and awe beside the couch where her young cousin lay, and raved in the fearful delirium of a brain fever.

Many weeks elapsed ere Annie could again take her place amongst her family; alternate fever and exhaustion had so prostrated her that her life was more than once despaired of. Had she been aware who it was so constantly and gently tended her, teaching her voice to forget its coldness, her manners its reserve, to soothe and comfort those hours of agony, she would have felt that some simple “deeds indeed could never die;” and that to her own sweetness of temper, and forbearing and active kindness, she owed the blessings of a sympathy and tenderness almost equalling a mother’s. But it was long before she was conscious of anything, or even capable of rousing herself from the lethargic stupor which still lingered even when sense and strength returned. That she sought earnestly to appear the same as usual—to evince how gratefully she felt the kindness lavished on her—to return to her employments, was very evident; but it seemed as if bodily weakness prevented all mental exertion. She shrunk in anguish from the thought that she had betrayed her love, though by neither word nor hint did her companions ever allude to the immediate occasion of her illness.

“Would she but shed tears—but speak her grief,” exclaimed Lord St. Clair to his sister, one day, after vainly endeavouring to excite a smile, “she would suffer less then; but she has never wept since; and before, the most trifling emotion, even of pleasure, would draw tears. Could you but draw forth her confidence—but make her weep. Is there no possible way?”

“I fear none: she shrinks from the slightest approach to the subject. I feel as if I dared not speak poor Reginald’s name.”

Chance, however, did that for which even Lady Emily’s courage failed. Annie was reclining, one morning, in a favourite boudoir, her eyes languidly wandering over the beautiful landscape, which stretched from the window. When last she had noticed it, the trees were bending beneath the weight of their glorious summer dress, and the gayest and brightest flowers were flinging their lavish beauties on the banks of the small but picturesque lake. The scene was still lovely, but it had changed; the trees which still retained foliage were all in the “sere and yellow leaf,” the ground was strewed with fallen leaves, the flowers were all gone, and Nature herself seemed emblematical of the change in Annie’s heart. Lady Emily watched her some time in silence, and then gently drew her attention to some beautiful groups of flowers which she had lately arranged. Annie turned from the window with a heavy sigh, and bent over the flowers; while Lady Emily continued her employments without further notice. She forgot that amongst those groups there was the plant, to find which Annie had rambled over hill and dale that fatal morning. From its extreme rarity and beauty she had placed it alone upon the page; and as Annie gazed upon it, a rush of feeling of the bright, sweet memories which had thronged her mind during that solitary ramble came back upon her—the dreams of hope, and joy, and love—with the force, the intensity of actual presence; as if they might still be realized, and the intervening time had been but a dark and troubled blank. She pushed the flower from her, and her head sunk on her clasped hands.

“My poor child, I forgot that flower was amongst them!” exclaimed Lady Emily, in a tone at once of such self-reproach and earnest sympathy, that Annie, with an uncontrollable impulse, suddenly sprung up, and folding her arms round her neck, burst into a passion of tears. All her cousin’s previous kindness she had attributed to pity for bodily suffering. That she could sympathise in her mental affliction, she had fancied—as the young are too prone to do of the colder and more experienced—was impossible; but the tone, the allusion to that little flower, betrayed that she, too, could believe in and understand the association of the material with the immaterial world; and Annie now wept upon her bosom, in the consoling consciousness that, cold as that heart seemed, it could yet feel and weep for her.

Lady Emily trembled; for the deep emotion she beheld recalled passages of equal suffering in her own life, which she had thought buried and at rest for ever. She trembled, lest in this appeal to her inmost soul her long striven-for calmness should fail, and her weakness should increase rather than soothe Annie’s anguish. Her hand shook, and her lip so quivered, that it was some minutes ere she could speak. We need not linger on the words which followed. The ice, which had seemed to close round Annie’s heart, dissolved—Reginald’s name was spoken—the fond secret of her life revealed; and from that day she found more strength to struggle with depression—to leave no effort untried to regain serenity, and conquer that worse foe to happiness, indifference, which the human heart contains. Once convinced, by the representations of affection and experience, that it was her duty actively to do, as well as passively to endure—to prove her resignation to the blow, which, though heavy, was still dealt by a Father’s hand, she did not fail. A yet more earnest desire to seek the happiness of others, and complete disregard of self—a calm and still serenity of word and look, were now her outward characteristics; while, within, though her spirit had gained new strength in its upward flight—new clinging love for that world where all is peace, the thought of the departed yet remained, gaining, it seemed, increase of power with every passing month. It had lost its absorbing anguish; but not its memories. Too truly did she feel, with that sweet chronicler of woman’s heart—

There were times when the thought would come, and so vividly, she could scarcely believe it only a thought, that Reginald might yet live, the public records be deceivers. But Lady Emily’s assurances that her father and brothers had made every inquiry, but that all the information obtained only confirmed the first statement, proved the utter fallacy of the dream.

II.

Nearly two years had elapsed since the death of Reginald De Vere ere any event of sufficient importance occurred in Annie’s life for us to resume the thread of our narrative. A shock like that, and on such a disposition, could never be forgotten, though time, the softener of all ills, had restored her to some degree of her wonted animation, and though the elastic spirits of the young girl had given way, the woman had become yet more attractive and lovable. The first London season after Reginald’s death she had not accompanied her uncle’s family to the great metropolis, but spent the period of their absence quietly in Scotland. The second, she did not refuse to join them; but scenes of festivity were so evidently distasteful, that her friends did not urge her entering more into society than her own inclinations prompted. But in her uncle’s house she was seen and known only to be admired and loved, receiving, to her extreme astonishment, an unexceptionable offer of marriage before she had been two months in London. It was declined gratefully, but so decidedly as to give no hope. Some weeks afterwards, Lord St. Clair one morning entered Annie’s room. She was alone, so intently engaged in drawing as not to observe the very peculiar expression of countenance with which he regarded her some minutes without speaking.

“I would give something to read your thoughts, cousin mine,” she said, playfully, at length raising her eyes to his face, which instantly resumed its usual kind and open expression. “I could hardly believe you were in the room, you were so silent.”

“I was thinking how very wise the world is, Annie. It knows and vouches for so many things concerning individuals, of which they are utterly ignorant themselves.”

“Why, what is the report now?”

“Only—” he paused for a second, then rallied so quickly, that the huskiness of his first words was unperceived, “that you and I are engaged in marriage, and that I only wait till you are of age, that the disparity of years may seem less.”

“The world must think much too highly of me for such a report to gain credence,” replied Annie, simply, yet gravely, though she did start at the intelligence.

“What can you mean?”

“That they must hold me in much greater respect than I deserve to unite my name, even in thought, with yours.”

“My dear Annie, can you mean that you are undeserving of the regard of any man, however high his worth? How little do you know yourself! Believe me, it is I who should feel proud that the world should believe this so strongly that not even the disparity of years between us is considered an objection.”

“Do not talk so, dear Henry, or I shall fear I am losing one of the truest friends I have. You have always treated me with such regard as never to flatter me; pray do not begin now.”

“Indeed you do me injustice, Annie; might I not return the charge, and accuse you of flattering me?”

“No, dear cousin. How can I do otherwise than look up to, and venerate your worth, associating with you at home, as I have done for nearly three years, and receiving such constant kindness, that had I been your own young sister you could not have shown more? Do I not see you as a son and brother? and if I did not venerate you, should I not be the only one, either at home or in the world, who did not do you the justice you deserve?”

“And may I not equally have learnt to know and love you?”

“Yes, as a child, a sister, but not as the wife you need.”

“Is the disparity of years, then, in your mind so great an obstacle? Do you think it quite impossible a man of eight-and-thirty can love a girl of twenty?”

“No, not impossible.”

“But impossible that a girl of twenty could love a man of eight-and-thirty; is that it?”

“Far less unlikely than the other case,” replied Annie, half smiling, for her complete unconsciousness caused her to be amused at her companion’s pertinacity.

“Then why should the world’s report be so utterly without foundation, dearest Annie?” inquired Lord St. Clair, with such a sudden change of countenance and tone that it startled her almost into consciousness. The arch and playful look vanished, her cheek paled, and the tears started to her eyes, and laying her hand confidingly on his arm, she said, with quivering lip—

“Dearest Henry, do not let me lose the kind brother, the true friend I have so long believed you.”

“You shall not, Annie,” he answered fervently, “even if to retain such appellatives makes me more miserable than you imagine.”

“Do not, do not say so! my thoughts are all memories, and were the world’s report indeed true, would be faithless every hour; could this make your happiness?”

“But must this always be? Is devotion to the departed a higher duty than giving happiness to the living? So purely unselfish as you are, would you not in time better secure your own peace by giving inexpressible happiness as the beloved and cherished wife of the living, who would never expect you to love as you have loved, than by indulging in the luxury of memory and devotedness to one who is in heaven? Is not this a question worth considering, Annie?”

“Not now, not now! oh, do not urge me now!” she implored, bursting into tears; and her companion on the instant banished every word and thought of self to soothe and calm her.

A month or two afterwards Lord St. Clair, to the astonishment of his friends, by whom he was regarded as a particularly quiet stay-at-home sort of person, accepted a diplomatic embassy to the courts of Germany and Russia, likely to detain him twelve or eighteen months. He had besought and received Annie’s permission to correspond with her. Letters from a mind and heart like his could not be otherwise than interesting. His words returned repeatedly to her thoughts; she loved him sufficiently to feel a degree of pleasure in the idea of adding to his happiness, and six months after he had left England, her answer to a letter from him, in which generalities had merged into personalities, contained the following words:—

“If, dearest Henry, the gratitude and reverence of one whose best affections still linger with the dead are indeed of sufficient worth to give you the happiness which you tell me rests with me, I will not refuse to become yours, if a twelvemonth hence you still desire it. Give me that time. The painful feelings with which I now look to marriage, as almost faithlessness to one who, though the actual words never passed his lips, I do believe loved me most truly, will then perhaps, in some degree at least, have subsided, and I may be able to give you all that your wife should bestow. I know and feel that time is the comforter as well as the destroyer, and that though it is actual agony to think that my heart will ever so change as to feel less acutely the loss I have sustained, I know it will and must, and that it is right and best it should do so. Give me but time then, dearest Henry—let the memories of the dead be so softened that I may do my duty lovingly as well as faithfully to the living; and till that may be, let us continue as we have been to the world and to each other.”

Lord St. Clair did not hesitate to accede to this request. Even his letters did not change their tone; he was still the friend more than the lover; but he contrived to shorten the period of his voluntary banishment, and eleven months after he had quitted England beheld his return.

There was a change in Annie, however, which alarmed and pained him; she was pale and thin, and strangely and feverishly restless. Lady Emily, from being constantly with her, had not remarked the great alteration, but acknowledged, in answer to St. Clair’s anxious queries, that she had seemed more unhappy the last four months, that the calm and tranquil cheerfulness which had characterised her had given place to alternations of fitful gaiety and more frequent depression; but what had occasioned it she could not tell; she thought it might be physical, as she had had a slight cough hanging about her for weeks, which nothing she took seemed to remove. Four months previous! was it possible that she might regret the promises she had so ingenuously given? Lord St. Clair more than once caught her glance fixed with a degree of pleading earnestness upon him, as if she failed in courage to speak; and as he was not one to encourage painful doubts where a word might solve them, he took an opportunity of kindly and affectionately inquiring why she was so changed.

The cause was soon revealed. About ten days after she had written to him, as we related, she had seen, amongst other despatches directed to Lord St. Clair, which were lying on the library table waiting to be arranged and forwarded, a single letter, the writing of the direction of which had caused such a sudden thrill and subsequent faintness, that it had been with difficulty she refrained from involuntarily tearing it open, to know from whom it came. She said that she had endeavoured to conquer the strange fancy; to reason with herself, that the resemblance to a writing she but too well remembered was mere accident. Yet so powerful had been its effect, that even when she recalled the superscription, the same feelings of heart-sickness returned as had overpowered her when it first met her eye. It had been put up with other public despatches—the family having before its arrival closed and sent more private letters; that as he had never alluded to it, she had struggled to believe it could have been nothing of interest to her, and yet the subject would not leave her mind, allowing her neither sleep at night nor rest by day. She knew it folly, she said, but conquer it she could not.

And that fearful state of internal restlessness was fated to continue; for, most unfortunately, the packet of despatches in which that was had been lost, in the overflow of a river which the messenger who bore it had to ford, and Lord St. Clair had never alluded to it, for his letters to Annie had been shorter than he liked, from the annoyance and increase of trouble which the loss of this very packet had occasioned him in his political employment. That the post-mark seemed Italian was all she could tell him, and his anxiety became as great as hers, though that it could really be what it was easy to discover Annie really imagined it, he believed impossible.

Meanwhile, the poor girl’s health—under a suspicion which, however imaginary, was very fearful—did not improve, and her relatives rested not till a skilful physician had been consulted; his opinion instantly decided them, and, despite of Annie’s resistance, a tour on the Continent was resolved on, Lord Ennerdale desiring her not to let him see her again, till she could bring back her own rosy smiling self.

The party consisted of only Lord St. Clair, Lady Emily, and Annie; and, making only a brief stay at Paris, they proceeded in a south-easterly direction, crossed the Jura, and fixed their residence for some weeks in the vicinity of Geneva. The complete change of air and scene seemed so to renovate Annie, that physical strength gradually returned, and with it more apparent calm of mind. Congeniality of taste in our companions is indispensable for the real enjoyment of travelling, and this Annie fully possessed; those three years of intimate association with the apparently cold and passionless Lady Emily had deepened Annie’s regard, but not altered her cousin’s chilling manner. But this delicious commune with nature, uninterrupted by intercourse with the world, caused her more than once so to relax as to excite even Annie’s surprise, and convince her more than ever that Lady Emily had not always been what she then was.

They were sitting one evening under the projecting roof of a jutting gallery belonging to a cottage in the beautiful valley of Chamouni; Lord St. Clair had that day left them to join a party of excursionists, in an expedition somewhat too fatiguing for his companions. The cottage, situated on a projecting mount or cliff, commanded a more extensive view than the parish of PrieurÉ itself permits. The rich luxuriance of the vale stretched beneath them, intersected with cliffs covered with foliage and large patches of emerald moss, and variously-tinted lichen clothing the grey stones. Here and there a true Alpine cottage peeped through dark woods of fir and larch, and the blue and sparkling Arve glided noiselessly along, still more lovely in the evening hour, as the glowing rays of sunset are contrasted with the deep shadows falling all around. Above them towered mountains of every form, blending their separate charms in a whole so sublime and extensive that height and breadth were lost in distance; misty vapours, or light fleecy clouds, were ever wreathing their snow-capped brows, while Mont Blanc itself stood alone in its sublime grandeur, and in the unsullied purity of its snowy robe. The sun itself was invisible, but its glowing rays were shed upon the mountain, dyeing it with a deep, rosy flood of light peculiar to that locality, and only to be described by its thrilling resemblance to that fearfully brilliant flush sometimes traced on the countenance of mortal beauty, when life is fading imperceptibly away, and the strange yet perfect loveliness rivets not alone the eye but the imagination with a species of fascination which we have no power to resist. The period of its continuance might have been from fifteen to twenty minutes, when it suddenly changed into a pale greyish tinge, of a shade and appearance so peculiar that it affected the heart and mind with the same species of awe as that with which we regard the sudden change from brilliant life to the ashy hues of death.

An exclamation of admiration, even of delight, broke so naturally from the lips of Lady Emily St. Clair, that her young companion looked up in her face with astonishment.

“Have I not surprised you, Annie?” she said, with a quiet smile. “Are you still amongst those who believe that one so cold and silent as I am now can have no feeling for enjoyment, can see no beauty in nature, no poetry in the universe?”

“No,” replied Annie, earnestly; “I know so much of you that mere superficial observers can never know, that I can well believe there is still more which my inexperienced eye can never reach. I wish,” she added, after a short pause, and with some hesitation, “that I were worthy to know you as you are, that you loved me sufficiently to unveil sometimes that which is so studiously concealed.”

“Do not do me such wrong, dearest Annie, as to doubt that I love you, because I am to you, in general, as to indifferent persons. I cannot change the manner acquired by months, nay, whole years of suffering, even to those whose affections I would do much to win. There is little of interest and much of suffering in my past life; but you shall hear it if you will.”

“Not if it give you pain, my kind friend,” said Annie; but she looked inquiringly as she seated herself on a cushion at her companion’s feet, and rested her arm on her knee. Lady Emily paused, as if collecting firmness for the task, then briefly spoke as follows.

“Few, who have only known me the last fifteen or sixteen years, would believe that I was once, Annie, far more enthusiastic and dreamy, and what the world calls romantic, than you were when I first knew you. An ardent love for the exalted and the beautiful, alike in man and nature; a restless craving for the pure and spiritual; an almost loathing for all that was mean and earthly: these were the elements of my romance, but carried to an excess, that instead of being beneficial, as they might have been, became indeed the height of folly, which is the world’s meaning for such feelings. I was a poet, a visionary, an enthusiast, feeding a naturally vivid imagination on the burning dreams of minds whose wings soared even higher than my own. By my family I was regarded with admiration and love, as one whose talents would raise me far higher than my rank. I had the advantage of association with the genius and the student; and their opinion of my powers, their sympathy, urged me on till I was astonished at myself. But there was a blank in the midst of pleasure; I soared too high in the moments of excitement. My mind, unable to sustain itself in the airy realms of an ill-regulated imagination, was fraught, on its return to earth, with a gloom and void even more exquisitely painful than its precious mood had been joyful. Yet had poetry been my only gift, its pains and pleasures might have been confined to my own breast; but the powers of satire, mine in no ordinary degree, were far more dangerous to myself in their baneful influence upon others. I indulged in the most cutting irony, careless whom I might wound, regardless of any feeling but my own pleasure; I knew religion only as a name, whose every ordinance was fulfilled by attending public service once a week. I heard and read that, to some minds, poetry vitalizes religion, for every throb unanswered upon earth lifted up the whole soul to that world where all was love and all was joy. I laughed at such romance, as I termed it, for I could not understand it. In the gloom and void occasionally felt, pride and triumph at my own superiority to my fellows were the constant occupants of my heart, urging me but too often to level the dart of venomed satire on those whose more worldly sentiments and coarser minds excited my contempt; even the young and gentle often bled beneath that cruel lash, if in the merest trifle of word or manner they differed from my idea of excellence. My own family loved me too indulgently to be aware of the dreadful extent of this vice; Henry, the only one whose noble nature and judicious feeling would have guided me aright, was a student in Germany, and I had no one whose counsels might have spared me, in some measure at least, the bitter self-reproach which heightened the chastisement preparing for me.

“But I am lingering. Amongst the numerous guests at my father’s was one, combining noble birth, genius, light and ready wit, with all the fascination of sparkling features, graceful form, and a manner whose elegance I have never yet seen equalled. He courted my society; he did not flatter, for that I ever scorned, but he appreciated. His manner always evinced respect for me, and pleasure at having found one to whom he could converse on nobler subjects than the mere chit-chat of a fashionable world. It needs not to enlarge upon our intimacy, or the means he took to make me believe, without in the least committing himself, that I was to him the object not of esteem or admiration alone.

“Why should I hesitate to speak that which is now as if it had never been? I loved him, Annie, how deeply and passionately! till my whole soul was wrapped in his image, and my very nature so changed, that I looked on this world with gentler feelings, and believed that the earth which contained him could not be as little worth as I had deemed it. All this would be useless to repeat; the blank in my heart was filled up; my woman’s soul, which neither fame nor talent could satisfy, was at rest; the actual words had not passed his lips indeed, but yet I did not, could not doubt him. That is not love in which a doubt can enter. I was visiting a mutual friend, and daily in expectation of his arrival; to relieve the yearning restlessness of anticipation, I had taken my tablets to a concealed nook in the garden, and was pouring out my whole soul in burning words, when his voice arrested me. The remark preceding his words I had not heard, but all which followed is written on my brain.

“‘Propose to Emily St. Clair!’ he said, in a tone which, while it retained its beautiful harmony, was so changed in expression that I only knew it his by the agony thrilling through my whole being at the words, ‘Percy, you are mocking me! Marry a blue—a wit! worse still, a poet. Pray procure me an admission into a lunatic asylum the very hour I make the proposal; for, at least, were I sufficiently mad to say, Will you have me? certain as I am of being accepted, I should escape being rendered more so. No, my good fellow, the lady is agreeable enough as long as I am unchained; but once fettered, her folly and romance would send me to heaven much sooner than I have the least inclination for. Why, were I in such a predicament as marriage with her, how do you suppose I could live for ever the actor I am now, when conversing with her, drawing her out as it were, to afford me amusement afterwards? The very idea is exhaustion!’”

“‘It is well her brothers have not seen the progress of your attentions,’ was the reply. ‘You might have to answer for such species of amusement.’”

“‘Nonsense, man! Were the Courts of Love in vogue as they were once, she could allege nothing against me to make me her prisoner for life. Why, it was the very effort to keep up the liaison, and yet not say one word which her romantic fancy could construe into an offer, that was so fatiguing. Her delight in my society was so evident, that I was obliged to be on my guard; words meaningless to others would have misericordia!’”

“‘Out upon your consummate self-conceit; she never forgot her self-respect,’ was the reply, and the voices faded in the distance.”

“And you heard this!” exclaimed Annie, indignation compelling the interruption. “Gracious heaven! can there be such men?”

“Be thankful you can still ask such a question, dearest Annie. I did hear—and more, remained outwardly calm; at that moment I believe I was conscious but of one feeling, not indignation; no, he might have spoken yet more cruelly, more contemptuously. I heard but one, felt but one truth—that he did not love me—that the deep whelming passion he had excited was unreturned—that he scorned those gifts which I had lately only valued as I believed them valued by him. My brain reeled for the moment; but sense and energy returned, as gradually, but with fearful distinctness, his every word and tone resounded in my ear. Anguish, which had been the first feeling, was as nothing, literally nothing, to that chaos of misery which followed—to disrobe the idol my heart had so madly worshipped of the bright colouring of honour and worth, to teach myself he was unworthy, had deceived, wilfully deceived. What was the suffering of unrequited love compared with this? He had said, too, that my preference was so evident, I would have grasped the faintest whisper of an offer. I knew the charge was false as himself; but that he should have believed it, added its bitter pang. How was I to act? My brow was burning, my pulses throbbing, yet return to my own home I would not; I would not feign illness, though God knows it would have been little feigned. I would meet him, pass in his company the period I had promised to my friend, and then I cared not.”

“And you did this?” asked Annie, clasping Lady Emily’s, hand in both hers, and almost startled at its coldness—the only proof that the narrator told not her tale unmoved.

“I did more, my child. Though poetry and satire were now to me but fearful spectres, from which a tortured spirit shrank—though that very hour I burned every fragment of composition once so precious, yet, during three long weary weeks, I was to him and to all around me as I had always been; perhaps even more sparkling, more animated, and far more joyous. Without any visible effort, I so far changed in bearing towards him, that instead of finding in his conversation as before an echo to my own, I questioned, I doubted, and more than once I saw him quail beneath my glance or tone, compelled, ere we parted, to doubt the influence which he had boasted he possessed. But what availed all this? It did not, could not quench the burning fever within; and when I returned to the quiet of my father’s roof, the tight-strung cord was snapped, and overwrought energies so gave way, that for months, nay, years, the effects of that struggle were visible in a state of health so precarious, so exhausted, that I have seen my poor father pace my chamber hour by hour in silent agony, without the power to address him. For many months all was to me a blank; yet I believe I was not wholly insensible nor always under the influence of fever. Ere I recovered sufficiently again to mingle with the world, he who had so deceived me became the husband of another; and that other, one who had been my dearest friend, and who has shunned me since as if she too had deceived, and had courted me from policy, not love. I have had no proof that this really was the case, but my faith in all that was good, and beautiful, and true was so shaken, I believed it as a thing that must be, for such was human nature. This marriage sufficiently accounted to my family for my mysterious illness. Indignation was so generally felt, that had I been awake to outward things, my mind might have been perfectly at rest that I had given him no undue encouragement: and his manner had indeed been such as to give, not alone to myself, but to all who had observed, no doubt of his apparent meaning; but I knew nothing of all this. While chained to my couch by bodily exhaustion, memories of my past life rose to appal me, and to add the bitter agony of unmitigated self-reproach to that of unrequited affection. Precious gifts had been intrusted to me, and what account could I render of them at that awful throne, before which daily, almost hourly, I expected to be summoned? They had estranged me from my God, and from His creatures. I learned to feel His words were true. Unguided by either religion or reason, what could I have been but the idle follower of folly and romance. No throb of kindness or of gentle feeling had interfered to check the contempt I felt for, and breathed in cutting satire upon, others. I had wilfully trampled on many a young kind heart, and it was but just that I should have been thus trampled on myself. Presumption and self-conceit caused me to smile, to scorn the censure of the world, and in all probability my manner had been too unguarded. This bitter self-humiliation only increased the struggle to forget that I had loved. In reproaching myself I ceased to reproach him; the pride that had supported me was gone. These thoughts continually pressing on heart and brain were, I am well aware, the sole sources of my long and incurable disease, but I had no power to shake them off; and, fearfully as I suffered, I have never ceased to bless the gracious hand that sent the chastening and recalled me, ere it was too late, unto Himself.”

Lady Emily paused; the quivering of her voice and lip betraying emotion which she evidently struggled to suppress. Annie’s tears were falling on her hand, and ere she spoke again, she bent down and kissed her forehead.

“You now know, dearest Annie, more of me than I ever breathed to mortal ear,” she resumed, in her usual calm and quiet tone, “more than I ever thought could pass my lips. But do not weep for me, my child; I am happier, safer now, than I could have been had the wild, misguided feelings of earlier life continued. It was no small portion of my suffering so to control myself as never to give vent to the satirical bitterness that, when I rejoined the world, tinged my words and thoughts more darkly than ever. The determination never to use that dangerous gift, gave to my words and manner a stiffness and cold reserve which have banished from me all those whose regard I would have done much to win. Many young loving hearts have shrunk from me, perceiving no sympathy in their warm imaginations and glowing feelings; and I dared not undeceive them, for I felt no confidence in myself, and feared again to avow sentiments I had buried so deeply in my own heart. Others again shunned me, because terrified at a semblance of austerity, which they could not know was exercised only towards myself; and frequently have I wept in secret at the loneliness which seemed to characterise my path on earth. Even you, my Annie, gentle and forbearing as you were, till I could not but love you, have often checked your animated words beneath the cold, withering influence of my glance or smile.”

“Do not call it cold and withering, my dear, kind friend,” replied Annie, warmly. “I learned to love you long before I dared hope to win your regard; but could I doubt you in my hour of anguish? Though even then I did you wrong; for I thought I was alone in my misery—and you had suffered doubly more.”

“You needed not such awful chastisement, my love; I brought it on myself. But you are right; fearful as is the death of a beloved one, it is happiness compared to the death of love, to the blasting of our belief in the good and true; the disrobing an idol, till we ask what it is we have loved. My dearest Annie, bless God that this you have been spared.”

Annie was silent several minutes, and then raising her head, she abruptly and strangely asked, “Aye, this; but there are other trials. Oh, Lady Emily, what must be the agony of that heart, who, sacrificing for the sake of the living the memories of the supposed dead, finds too late, that circumstances, not death, have come between her and the object of her first affections; that they love each other still, yet must be strangers, parted more completely than by death. What must be her duty then?”

“You ask me a difficult question, my dear child. If the heart clings to such a thought, better never wed.”

A bright gleam, as of relief, flitted over Annie’s features; but, changing the subject as abruptly as she had entered upon it, she asked, with hesitation, “And that poetic talent to which you have alluded, do you never exercise it now?”

“Never,” replied Lady Emily, taking her companion’s arm, and entering the house. “On my first recovery I dared not, for my sinful abuse of the power had been too recent; though I do believe, that as my taste had completely changed in the poets which I read, so too would my writings have done. But year after year passed; gradually I destroyed every memorial of my passed life, and found peace and happiness in the employment which you have seen and aided, until at length even the inclination to write passed away; and I forgot, even as you must, dear girl,” she added, with a smile, “that I had been a poet, and one of no mean grade.”

The silent pressure of Annie’s hand was sufficient guarantee for Lady Emily that her confidence had not been misplaced; and she was happier, for she no longer feared that, misunderstanding, Annie would at length shrink from her.

We will not linger with our travellers while en route. They visited all of interest in Naples and Rome, and resolved on passing the winter at Florence. Many weeks had passed in their delightful tour; Annie’s health was decidedly renovated; but there were still times when her spirits seemed to sink beneath a weight of depression for which neither of her relatives could account. Each month that passed diminished the time specified by Annie as the term of mourning, and yet Lord St. Clair vainly tried to rejoice; he saw that, instead of decreasing, the memory of Reginald became stronger—that the extraordinary impression made by the superscription of the letter would remain—and ardently he wished that Annie had followed her impulse, and opened it ere it was sent on. He never spoke of love, he never recalled her promise, and Annie so blessed him for his forbearance that, could she but have realized the universal belief in the death of Reginald, she would at once have given him her hand, glad to exchange the torturing doubts which engrossed her for the tranquil calm which must, she thought, attend devotion to one who so nobly proved the love he bore herself.

The many interesting works of ancient art in Florence, so riveted the attention and occupied the time of our English travellers, that the one subject engrossing the whole attention of the Florentines was for some little time unheeded. The town was full of the unrivalled success of a young sculptor, who had burst into fame, no one knew how or where. He had been studying the last two years, amidst the superb specimens of art, in the galleries of Florence, but so silently, so unassumingly, that he was only known as famous. His copies of Canova and other celebrated sculptors had been pronounced perfect by able judges; but it was not till he had completed an original group that he at all seemed to sue for notice, and when that did appear, the easily-excited Italians received it with such universal admiration, that the unknown artist was sought for on all sides, courted, flattered, and, better far, appreciated by those whose opinions were of value. Italy is indeed the country where talent may rise to eminence, fostered and cherished by the encouragement for which it so thirsts. In this case, however, the interest excited originally by genius was heightened by the reserved manners of the young sculptor, who rather shrunk from than courted notice, except from the Italians themselves. It was rarely an English soirÉe could obtain the favour of his presence. His appearance and name declared him Spanish, a supposition which, as he never contradicted it, gained universal belief. That he spoke English, French, and Italian as fluently as Spanish, and was intimately acquainted with their literature, only proved that his mental capabilities were not confined merely to his art. How he found time to execute all the orders for busts, ornamental groups, etc., which he received, was a mystery to the idler, and a wonder even to the brethren of his craft, greatly heightened when his first original group appeared. It was not alone the execution, but the daring boldness of his subject which had occasioned such universal notice. Boldly leaving the beaten path of classic subjects, his group, though consisting only of three figures, embodied a striking incident in the earliest stage of the French revolution. A young and beautiful girl had flung herself before an aged parent, clasping his neck with one hand, and by the attitude of the other, combined with the expression of the face, was evidently imploring life for him, even by the sacrifice of her own. On the touching and, to the Italian eye, somewhat peculiar beauty of the face, the matchless grace of the attitude, and exquisitely modelled limbs, the sculptor appeared to have lingered till he had out-done himself. The countenance of the father breathed but admiring love for the heroic being whom his arm encircled, as if every thought centred in her, to the total exclusion of all terror for himself. Before them, in a crouching attitude, as in the act of filling a goblet with the loathsome fluid which deluged the streets, was a half-naked form, whose ruffian features and muscular limbs contrasted well with the graceful beauty and nobleness of form in the other figures. The head was upraised, a withering sneer upon the lips, a combination of triumph and barbarity on the whole countenance, which so explained the tale it recorded, that, as an animated Italian told Lord St. Clair, the heart of the gazers throbbed, and the cheek paled, as if life itself were before them. It stood in an apartment of the Palazzo Vecchio, where he entreated his English friends to go and see it. “I will not only see this wonderful group, but make acquaintance with its artist,” he replied; “for, after hearing all this, know him I will.”

“That you will find some difficulty in doing,” was the rejoinder. “He shrinks from all you English; besides, he is, I believe, now at Bologna, and his return is uncertain.”

“Never mind, trust me for making acquaintance with this lion, shy though he be.”

“There is but one fault in his female figure,” observed a gentleman who had joined the group, and was greeted with much warmth by Lord St. Clair, “a fault which we English ought to consider a virtue, but yet is in contradiction to Signor Castellan’s apparent reserve towards our countrymen. The beauty of the female is too English for a French incident and purely French characters. It is very lovely, I grant, but the loveliness is our own.”

The observation naturally produced a warm discussion, which ended as most discussions do, in each party retaining his own opinion, and Lord St. Clair taking his newly-found old friend home with him, introduced him to Lady Emily and Annie.

“And are you settled down at last, Kenrich, tired of wanderings and adventures? though last time I heard of you, you were actually enjoying the wars and cabals of Madrid.”

“I am not very sober yet, St. Clair; but I was fool enough to join the Carlists three or four years ago, and their barbarity to my own countrymen so sickened me of war, that I threw up my commission, and have never drawn sword since.”

“What barbarity?” asked Lord St. Clair, catching almost by instinct more than look the expression of Annie’s face.

“Why, you must have heard—the English papers were full of it—that fine fellow Captain De Vere was amongst them. He and eight or ten others were taken prisoners, and were all murdered—for it was nothing else.”

“But are you sure he was amongst them? We all knew and loved De Vere, and long hoped he might have escaped, and only been reported amongst the killed.”

“Escaped, my dear fellow! how was that possible? Besides, he was so terribly wounded, that he could not have survived, even had they not so cruelly dealt with him. I could not save him, but I saw him decently interred, and from that moment loathed military service, and left Spain.”

“It was full time, I think,” quietly rejoined Lady Emily. “Annie, will you try if you can match this shade for me among the chenilles in my room? I cannot finish this leaf without it, and your eyes are better than mine.”

Annie took the chenille designated from the frame, over which her cousin was bending so intently in seeming, that she did not even look up as she addressed her, and quietly left the room. The moment she did so, Edward Kenrich burst into lavish praises of her beauty, declaring that was the exact style of Castellan’s figure, and therefore he was right, and it must be too English for perfect art, so running on in his usual wild strain, that Lord St. Clair had great difficulty in bringing him back to the point from which he had started, and gathering from him every particular of the death of Reginald De Vere.

Annie did not reappear, and Lady Emily’s great desire to finish her leaf seemed to have subsided with her absence, for she made no effort to recall her. Just before dinner, however, Lord St. Clair, noticing the flutter of her white dress between the orange trees, which almost concealed the balcony leading from the drawing-room, hastily rejoined her. She looked up in his face without a word, but he answered her thoughts, tenderly and gently repeating all the information he had gained. There could be no doubt, and for one brief minute the poor girl’s head sunk on his arm, with a sudden burst of tears.

“I know it is all folly, Henry. I had no right to hope; forgive me, I do but distress you; and yet that writing—that strange writing, whom could it have been from?”

“Not from Reginald, dearest, or it would have been to you, not to me. Has that never struck you, Annie?”

It had not till that moment, and it convinced her. She remained alone that evening, in deep meditation and earnest prayer; and the result was a firm conviction that nothing but a new and solemn duty would restore her to the calm of mind for which she yearned—that devotion to another well worthy of it must draw her from herself. A sleepless night confirmed this resolution, and the very next day the promise passed her lips to be the wife of Lord St. Clair, within a week of their return to England. A few days afterwards they went to the celebrated church of Santa Croce, during vesper service. The magnificent interior, heightened in its effect by the light and shadow flung by huge waxen tapers, the superb monuments, the white-stoled monks and dark dresses of the officiating priests, the kneeling and standing groups, silent and motionless as the marble monuments around—the deep-toned organ, and swelling voices of the choristers, completely enchained the imagination of our travellers. It was strange, excited almost to pain as she was, that Annie at length found her whole attention unconsciously fixed on a single figure, who was leaning against the tomb of Michael Angelo. His face was turned from her, but there was something in his bearing and his attitude which riveted her as by a spell, and the longing to look on his face became strangely and indefinably intense. The soft light of a taper burning over the tomb brought out in good relief the stranger’s uncovered head, whose small and classic shape was shaded by clustering hair of glossy black.

“There he is! there is our sculptor, Renaud Castellan!” whispered one of the Italians who had accompanied them, directing Lord St. Clair’s attention to the very figure on whom Annie’s gaze was so strangely fixed; but even as he spoke, the young man moved his position, and disappeared in one of the aisles, leaving Annie’s desire to see his face ungratified, and only permitting Lord St. Clair to catch the outline of his figure.

“Was not Mrs. De Vere’s maiden name Castellan?” St. Clair asked of Annie, as they walked together from the church to the house of their Italian friend, who had claimed them for a petit souper, and some music. The answer was in the affirmative, and Lord St. Clair remarked it would be strange if this young Spaniard proved to be of the same family. “I must seek him out.”

“See his group first,” was the rejoinder of one of the party; while to Annie the words seemed to disperse the miserable doubts again thronging round her—being of the same family might account for a casual resemblance.

It was with some little difficulty Annie was prevailed upon to sing; but when once seated at her harp, timidity gave place to her real love of the art, and the simple purity, the touching pathos of her style charmed all who heard. The entrance of a guest had not interrupted her, nor disturbed the listeners. Lord St. Clair was amused at the look of admiring perplexity with which he regarded Annie, not himself perceiving that, where the Italian stood, the light fell upon her countenance, so as to give it a different appearance and expression to that which was generally perceivable.

Approaching her, as soon as the buzz of admiration had somewhat subsided, he engaged her in animated conversation; nor was Lord St. Clair’s curiosity lessened by hearing him inquire “if the signorina were not acquainted with the young sculptor, of whom all Florence raved?” Much surprised, she answered in the negative.

“But surely you have been introduced to him, have you not?”

“No,” replied Annie, smiling at his earnestness. “I never even heard of him till I came here; and he has been at Bologna, till this evening, ever since.”

“Then he has seen you, signora, either in his sleeping or waking dreams,” was the rejoinder, in so animated a tone that it arrested the attention of the whole party; “for never did marble and life so resemble each other as the beauty of your face and of his creation. Surely you must all see it,” he continued, turning to his friends with the sparkling vivacity peculiar to his countrymen when excited. “Why, it is not feature alone, but the character, the grace, the similarity is perfect!”

“I told you so, but you would not believe me,” bluntly answered Kenrich. “I told you it was an English face and English character; but you all denied it. I am glad my lovely countrywoman has opened your eyes.”

“Why this is better and better, Annie; do not blush so prettily about it,” whispered Lord St. Clair, as, attention once aroused, the similarity was universally acknowledged. “If the resemblance be chance, it is something to marvel at; if intentional, why I shall be jealous of the sculptor.”

“You need not, Henry,” was the reply, in a tone so sad that it pained him.

“Well, well, we will go and see it at least, love, and judge of its merit with our own eyes.”

The next day accordingly they went, and (the most convincing proof of the perfection of the work) were not disappointed. Neither its beauty nor its eloquence had been exaggerated, and the resemblance to Annie was so extraordinary that the eyes of all the spectators within the room were attracted towards her; but the expression of the countenance of the father in the group riveted her attention far more than the female figure. It was with a heavy sigh she turned from it, and was pale and silent during their way home; but St. Clair was so engrossed by the beauty of the work, the strange resemblance, and his resolution to leave no stone unturned to gain the acquaintance of the young artist, that it passed unnoticed even by him.

“Why, what ails you, Annie? are you not well, dear?” kindly inquired Lady Emily, some hours later. Wondering why her young companion did not join her as usual, she had sought her in her own room, and found her with her face buried in her hands, and her whole attitude denoting suffering. “Henry has gone to seek out this Signor Castellan, to find out, if he can, in what this strange similarity originated, and who and what he is.”

“Shall I tell you?” answered Annie, in a tone so strange that it startled almost as much as the whiteness of her face. “Reginald Castellan De Vere! Was not his mother’s name Castellan? and has he not often and often boasted his descent from Spanish heroes, and from this feeling fought for Spain in preference to any other country? Did he not always love the art of sculpture? Can it be chance that has marked the father and daughter of that group with the characteristics of the revered friend and favourite companion of his youth? No, no, no! Oh! Lady Emily, you bade me once thank God that I had never been deceived; teach me how to bear this.”

“Bear what, my poor child?” replied her companion, soothingly, as Annie threw herself on her neck in fearful agitation. “If this be indeed as you say, what can there be but happiness for you? It is for another we must feel.”

“Happiness for me! and he has never even so far thought of me as to tell me the report of his death was false, and he still lived—never recalled himself to one whom, when he departed, he so loved—loved! how know I that? he never said it; why should I believe him different to others?”

“My dearest Annie, this is not like yourself. Why, if he have ceased to love you, should the work of his hand—a work which must have employed his mind and heart long days and nights—bear the impress of your face and form?”

“Memory, association, mere casualty—the days of his boyhood may be dear to his mind; but how can affection, even a brothers, have inspired that group, when—when he has allowed me so long to believe him dead?”

“It is all a mystery, my dear child; but I feel convinced it will be solved, if we can really prove his identity. May he not have written, and the letter miscarried?” Annie wildly raised her head. “May he not have been deceived? perhaps—for we can never trace rumours—but may he not have heard that of you which, to a mind like his, would cause him to shrink from recalling himself? He left you such a child, how might he build on having so won your regard that you would remain single for his sake? Dearest Annie, if this indeed be not all imagination, and Reginald really lives, trust me you will be happy yet.”

How will a few judicious words change the whole current of thoughts and feeling! Before Lady Emily ceased to speak, Annie was weeping such blessed tears. The proud, cold mood which, had her companion spoken as her own experience of man’s nature must have dictated, might have been retained, and made her miserable for life, dissolved before returning trust and hope. She dared not define what it was she hoped; but it was not till she heard Lord St. Clair’s voice, and she tried to spring forwards to meet him and know the truth, that a sudden revulsion of feeling so completely overpowered her that she sunk back upon the couch. How dared she rejoice, even if Reginald lived? what could he be to her who was the promised bride of another?

“Emily!” exclaimed Lord St. Clair, in utter astonishment, as, on his entering the drawing-room, his cold and dignified sister hastily met him, and taking both his hands, tried to speak, but failed: and leaning her head against him, he felt that she was in tears. “What is the matter, love? something very dreadful for you to weep.”

She controlled herself with a strong effort, and entered at once into the recital of the scene between her and Annie. “Could it possibly be as she supposed?”

“It may be,” was the reply, in a calm firm tone; “there is nothing impossible in it. I went to his lodgings, but, as I supposed, he was either out or too much engaged to be seen; but I am to meet him to-night at the Contessa Corsini’s, and this strange mystery will be unravelled.”

“And you, dear Henry—” she could say no more, so holy seemed his feelings.

“And I, my dear sister, will act as that man should whose aim is not the gratification of his own desires, but the happiness of one far dearer than himself. I do not tell you I shall not feel, and deeply; but does the warrior shrink from the battle before him because he may be wounded? You may love me more, my Emily, if you will,” he continued, fondly passing his arm round her, and kissing her cheek, “for affection is always balm; but I will have no tears—they are only for the unworthy. Where is Annie? poor child, she must be overwrought, from many causes; let me see her, she will be calmer then.”

He was right. What passed between them it needs not to relate. Our readers can little enter into the high character of Lord St. Clair, if they cannot satisfy themselves as to the manner, as well the nature and extent, of the sacrifice he made. He was not one to wring the gentle heart he so unselfishly resigned, by the betrayal of personal suffering; he coveted the continuance, nay, the increase of her regard, and nobly he earned it.

It was a brilliant scene on which, a few hours later, he entered, introduced by the same Italian, Signor Lanzi, who had been the first to trace the resemblance between Annie and the female figure of the group. But neither loveliness nor talent, both of which thronged the halls, had at that moment attraction for Lord St. Clair; his glance had singled out a tall, slight form, leaning against a marble pillar, and half shaded by the drapery of a curtain. His head was bent down; he seemed in the act of listening and replying to the smiling jests of the countess, who was sitting near him; the cheek and brow were very pale, and the mouth, when still, somewhat stern in expression; but it was a fine face, bearing the stamp of genius too visibly ever to be passed unremarked.

“You may smile, and look incredulous, signor,” were the words that first met the ears of the English nobleman, from the young countess, in Italy’s sweetest tone; “but since you deserted us for Bologna, a living likeness has appeared of your beautiful AmÉle.”

“Mademoiselle de Sombreuil herself, perhaps,” he replied, half smiling. “Fancy would indeed have served me well, had such a chance occurred.”

“You are quite wrong. I doubt whether Mademoiselle de Sombreuil would herself resemble your fancy statue, as much as la bella Inglese does.”

“La bella Inglese! who may she be?” inquired the young sculptor, somewhat agitated.

“A lovely girl, who only appeared in Florence as you left it. Lanzi informed me the resemblance was so perfect, he imagined she must know you; but she had never even heard of you till she came here.”

“And what may be her name.”

“As you seem so interested, I regret that I cannot tell you. It is so truly English that it will bear no Italian accent, therefore I cannot remember it; but find Lanzi, I expect him here to-night, and he will tell you all about her.”

The arrival of new guests, and the attention of the countess called for from himself, the sculptor hastily turned, as in the act of seeking the individual she had named. He had not advanced many yards when he started violently, and with a sudden impulse retreated into a small withdrawing room, near which he had stood.

“Why shun me, Signor Castellan?” inquired a frank kind voice in English; and Lord St. Clair’s hand was extended, and, after a moment’s visible hesitation, accepted and almost convulsively pressed. “Why this long, mysterious concealment, my young friend? were there none, think you, to rejoice that you were still amongst the living?”

“Was not your lordship aware of my existence, insignificant as it is, more than a twelvemonth since? My own hand and signature were surely sufficient guarantee,” he answered, in a cold proud tone.

“Then you did write, and Annie was not deceived! Little did I know the precious intelligence contained in the packet, lost on its way to me in Russia, and the want of which, in a political view, caused me such annoyance. But why wait so long, my dear fellow, to give us tidings so many would have rejoiced to hear?”

“So many! There were more, then, to mourn me dead, than to love me living? But forgive me,” he continued, less bitterly; “Your family would have been my friends, and therefore was it I wrote to tell you that I lived.”

“But was there not one, Reginald, who deserved an earlier notice at your hands? why leave her so long to mourn you as dead, and then to learn such joyful tidings from others than yourself? The ties of early youth, of fond associations, I should have thought sufficient of themselves alone to prevent such wrong.”

Reginald’s very lip grew white as he replied, “Was not her husband the fittest person to give Lady St. Clair such tidings?”

“Her husband, Reginald? You speak enigmas.”

“How!” gasped the young man, as he laid his cold and trembling hand on his companion’s arm. “Is not Annie Grey your wife?”

“No!” replied Lord St. Clair, the peculiar expression clouding his noble countenance for the moment passing unnoticed; “her heart was with the dead!”

Reginald De Vere struggled with bursting emotion, but his trembling limbs refused to support him; and sinking powerlessly on a sofa, he covered his face with his hands, and wept such tears as only spring from manhood’s unutterable joy.

It still wanted an hour to midnight, and Lady Emily was in vain endeavouring to prevail on Annie to retire to rest.

“You are feverish and worn out already, Annie. How will you be able to support the excitement of to-morrow without rest to-night?”

“It would be no rest if I lie down; I cannot sleep. Only let me know he lives!” and she twined her arms round Lady Emily’s neck, and looked so appealingly, so mournfully, no heart could have urged more.

There was a pause of several minutes, and then Annie started up.

“It is Henry’s step!” she exclaimed and would have sprung forward, but her feet felt rooted to the ground; another moment Lord St. Clair was at her side.

“Promise me to bear the shock of joy better than you did the shock of grief, or I can tell you nothing,” he said, gently; but there was no need for another word. Faint as she was, every object in the room seeming to swim before her eyes, every word to be indistinct, yet one figure was visible, one voice calling her his own, own Annie—beseeching her to forgive and bless him! reached her heart, and loosed its icy chains, till she could breathe again. She felt not that strength had entirely deserted her, for she was clasped to the heart of Reginald De Vere, and the deadly faintness passed in the gushing tears that fell upon his bosom.

Mysterious as was Reginald de Vere’s silence, its causes may be summed up in a few words. To his own generous deed, recorded in the early part of our tale, he owed the preservation of his life. When bleeding and exhausted he was led a prisoner to the Carlist camp, he was instantly recognised by the poor woman whose child he had saved, and whom he had sent on to her husband. The tale of his kindness, his generosity, his bravery had been repeated again and again by the happy wife, and created amongst the common soldiery a complete sensation in his favour; so that very many were found eager and willing to aid Juan Pacheco in his resolution to return the good conferred, and save his wife’s benefactor at the hazard of his own life. He had already been disgusted with his life in the camp; the beauty of his young wife had exposed him and her to insults which, as he had no power to retaliate, urged him to seize the first opportunity to desert. One by one the prisoners had been led to execution, and one by one had fallen. Reginald, unable to support himself from wounds and exhaustion, though quite conscious he was placed there to die, was loosely bound to a post, as a better mark to the soldiers who fronted him. They fired—the girthings which bound him gave way, and a dead faint succeeded; but they had fired with harmless weapons, and when Reginald awoke from what he fancied death, he found himself in a covered cart, carefully watched and tended by the young mother and her boy, whom he recognised at once; his captain’s uniform placed on the body of a young Spaniard who had fallen in battle, and whose features were not unlike those of De Vere, no doubt causing Edward Kenrich’s belief in his being really Reginald, and his having been in consequence honourably interred. Juan Pacheco’s knowledge of the wilds and intricate windings of his native country enabled him ably to elude the pursuit to which, as a deserter, he was liable; but De Vere suffered so dreadfully from alternate fever and exhaustion, during the journey, that many times his kind preservers feared their care would be in vain, and death would release him ere earthly rest and shelter were obtained. But at length the goal was gained—a small cottage belonging to a monastery of Saint Iago, situated in so retired a pass of the Pyrenees that none but mountaineers knew of its existence. Under the skilful medical aid of one of the fathers Reginald slowly regained health; but it was not till nearly a year after his supposed death that he regained the elasticity and entire use of his limbs, such as he had previously enjoyed. The severity of monastic discipline did not characterise the monks of Saint Iago. They were but few in number; old and respectable men, who had turned from the distracting turmoils of their unhappy country, and sought peace in study and deeds of kindness. In one of these aged men Reginald discovered an uncle of his mother—one who had always mourned her departure to another land, and union with a heretic, but who had loved her to the end, and was willing to receive with affection any of her children. The fearful sufferings and deep melancholy of the young Englishman had attracted him, even before the picture of his mother, which Reginald constantly wore discovered the relationship between them. For nearly two years De Vere remained in this solitude; the fear of drawing down ruin and misery on his preservers prevented his writing to his commanding officer, to state his escape—Padre Felipo alleging the state of the country was such, that his letter might not only be seized and himself retaken, but Pacheco exposed to the danger of execution as a deserter and abettor of his escape. After the first year he made many attempts to communicate with his friends in England—Annie Grey amongst the number—but he never heard in return; therefore concluded, and with justice, that his letters had never reached a post.

But the two years of solitude, instead of being a mental blank, was the hinge of circumstances on which his whole after-career turned. To amuse his confinement and please the children, he resumed the favourite amusement of his boyhood, carving in wood and stone, and with such success as to astonish himself. He found an admirer and instructor where he little expected it, in one of the monks; and under his guidance, and emboldened by encouragement, made such rapid progress, that his whole soul became wrapt in the desire to visit Italy, and study there. His pantings for fame were now defined—a flash of light seemed to have irradiated his whole being, and to burst the chains of destiny, which still cramped energy and life. It was the consciousness of genius, the proud conviction that he might indeed win the object of his love; win, and be worthy of her, and give her a name proud as those of the men of genius whose lives they had read and venerated together.

The days when all the fortunes of the monks were devoted to their abbeys or to a patron saint were over, and Padre Felipo rejoiced at possessing the means effectually to aid his young relative. He settled on him a sum more than sufficient to gratify all his desires, and Reginald hesitated no longer to concentrate all his energies on this one pursuit. He went to Italy, adopting the name of his benefactor, which was also that of his mother; and the wish not to be known in England, until he had perfected himself in his art, caused him to retain it, even when no danger was attached to the acknowledgment of his existence.

But once in Italy, the yearning to hear of his family and friends became intense, while a strange feeling of dread withheld him from again addressing Annie. It was two years and a half since they had parted, two since he had been reported dead. What might not have occurred in that interval? He had left her free, and so child-like, so simple in character, that how could he, how dared he indulge the hope that she had so returned his love, as to remain single for his sake? He had never spoken of love to her; his affection was so pure and true, that it had withheld him from linking, by a too impetuous avowal, her fate with one so gloomy as his own. His genius seemed now to promise a fairer destiny, but his heart, still darkened by the fearful creed of fatalism, believed that his very promise would be dashed with gloom, and from the ascendency of this unhappy feeling, failing in courage to address Annie herself, he wrote to one of his sisters, beseeching a speedy reply, with information of his father, and all she could learn of Miss Grey. The reply was many weeks before it came, pleading the usual excuse for unjustifiable silence—stress of occupation and dislike to letter-writing. Basil De Vere was in America, and Miss Grey on the eve of marriage with Lord St. Clair; the whole London world was full of it, on account of the disparity of years between the parties, and because Lord St. Clair had never seemed a marrying man; but that it was a settled affair there was not the smallest doubt. She wrote as if it could concern Reginald but little; but the pang was such as to confirm his fearful creed of an inexorable fate, and plunge him into a despondency, that genius itself seemed unable to remove. At first he worked at his art mechanically, but gradually his mind became aroused, and he tried to forget the heart’s anguish in such persevering labour, that though to mere observers its effects were marvellous in so speedy a perfection, it was, in fact, but the natural consequence of unceasing mental and manucipal work. He constantly reproached himself for the agony he felt; what right had he to suppose he had had any hold upon her? Why could he not rejoice in her happy prospects, and write to tell her so? But weeks merged into months ere he could do this, and then he could not address herself, but wrote to Lord St. Clair, revealing his escape, his concealment, and finally the promised success of his art, with a calm, affectionate message to Annie. The letter cost him a bitter struggle, and with feverish restlessness he awaited the reply; but when none came, bitter thoughts possessed him. He believed himself entirely forgotten and uncared for by his friends; and every energy cramped (save for his art) by his spiritless belief, he determined to remain so, and shun alike England and her sons. It was his fate, he inwardly declared, and he must bend to it; and thus, as is ever the case with these dark dreamers, he created for himself the lonely doom he imagined his destiny marked out. The death of his aged relative, in the monastery of St. Iago, placed a moderate fortune at his disposal, and enabled him still more successfully and earnestly to pursue his art. For a time the excitement attendant on the creation of his group roused him from himself, but the reaction was plunging him still deeper into the dark abyss of misanthropy and gloom when his discovery, through his own beautiful work, the sudden and almost overwhelming happiness bursting through the darkness of his spirit, in the consciousness that Annie was free, that she had ever loved him, completely changed the current of his thoughts, and permitted him a realization of joy, before which the dark creed of destiny fled for ever.

It is in a cheerful sitting-room of a picturesque dwelling on the banks of Keswick Lake that our readers may once more look on Annie Grey, ere they bid her farewell—Annie Grey indeed she was not; but there was little change visible, save that her fair cheek bore the rose, and her beautiful form the roundness of more perfect health, than when we last beheld her. The large French windows opened on a small but beautiful garden, where the taste of England and Italy was so combined, as to render its flowers and statues the admiration of every beholder. The opposite window opened on a conservatory of beautiful exotics, and exquisite specimens of painting and sculpture adorned the room itself. An uncovered harp filled one corner, on which the evening sun, shining full from the stained glass of the western window, flung tints as bright and changing as those of the kaleidoscope. A hortus siccus, opened on a group half arranged, was on a table, at which Lady Emily St. Clair was seated, and Annie was standing at her side, with a volume of poems in her hand.

“You idle girl! you would have found what I wanted in five minutes a few years ago. What are you thinking about? Ah, Reginald, you are just in time, or Annie’s restlessness would have invaded your sanctum, depend upon it.”

“And had I not cause? A whole hour, nearly two, after your promised time; and your cheek pale, and your brow burning! Dearest, do not let your art be dearer than your wife!”

“What! jealous of all my marble figures, love? For shame!” replied her husband, playfully, twining his arm round her, and kissing her cheek; “but I will plead guilty to fatigue to-night, and you shall cure me by my favourite song.”

Annie flew to her harp, and De Vere, flinging himself on an easy chair, drank in the sounds with an intensity of delight which he never believed that song could have had the power to produce. “Yes!” he exclaimed, as her sweet voice ceased, “what are palaces and their pleasures compared to an hour like this? There is, indeed, ‘no place like home;’ what, oh! what would the artist and the student be without it?”

“Why, how is this, Signor Rinaldo? what extraordinary spell has been flung over you, so to change your opinion of a song that once you would not even hear?” laughingly exclaimed Lord St. Clair, springing from the balcony into the room. “Good evening, Mrs. De Vere; I have some inclination to arrest you for using unlawful witchcraft on this gentleman, even as I once thought of seizing him for allowing you to die of grief for his loss, when he was all the time in life!”

“Guilty, guilty; we both plead guilty,” replied Reginald, in the same tone; “but my guilt is of far deeper dye; my Annie’s witchery has but thrown such a halo over my home, that all which speaks of its charm is as sweet to my ear as to my heart. I am changed, St. Clair, and not merely in loving a song I once despised,” he added, with much feeling, “but in being enabled to trace a hand of love, where once I beheld but remorseless fate; and my wife has done this, so gently, so silently, that I guessed not her influence until I found myself joining her own lowly prayers, and believing in the same sustaining faith.”

“And has she explained its mystery?” inquired Lady Emily, with earnest interest.

“No, dear friend; nor do I need it now. The belief that a God of infinite love and compassion ordains all things, yet leaves us the perfect exercise of our free will, and in that freedom, and the acts thence ensuing, works out His divine decrees, constraining no man, yet bringing our most adverse wills to work out His heavenly rule—this is a belief that must be felt, it cannot be explained, and thrice-blessed are they on whom its unspeakable comfort is bestowed!”