A succession of various weather, at last brought the frigate, which contained Louis de Montemar, and his faithful Lorenzo, in sight of the British coast. He was returning to it, after an absence of little more than two years, "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief!" In the morning of his youth, he bore in his bosom the experience of age. But it was not with a bent spirit, nor a wearied courage.

"I am bruised," said he to himself; "but not broken. I have yet, bonds of duty to the world, and I will not shrink from my task."

But he felt this inward assurance spring and grow, exactly in proportion as he drew nearer to the coast where he had imbibed the first aliments of all that was greatly emulous in his mind; where his heart had first known the glows of dear domestic tenderness; where, in short, he first knew a home.

"Since I left it," cried he, "I have never found another!" and, as he stood on the deck of the vessel, he thought the glittering summits of the cliff's he descried at a distance, shone on him like the welcoming smiles of a mother.

He landed. Portsmouth did not detain him long; nor any town, nor any track he passed over; while the rapid vehicle in which he threw himself, conveyed him with all the eagerness of his wishes towards Northumberland.

It was the season of the year when the family of Lindisfarne were usually removed to Morewick-hall. Though the summer was far advanced, in the southern climate he had left; in the colder latitudes of England he found snow on the mountains, and ice in the vallies. The leafless woods shook their glittering branches in the keen blast, and the heavy clouds, teeming with a hail-storm, burst, and darkened the road.

Louis would not think of the orange groves, and gales laden with balm and fragrance, he had so lately left behind; but he did not check the remembrance, because he regretted the change.

There were memories attached to it, which he wished not to cling too closely to his heart, when he should first press to his returning bosom, the venerable form of him, who had blessed him when he last crossed the top of that hill!—

As soon as the well-known pinnacles of Morewick-hall, appeared over the woods at the bottom of the valley, he called to the postilion to proceed slower. He was alone. For he could not approach that house, with any witness of his emotion. But the man had no sooner obeyed his directions, and was winding down the hill with a leisurely pace, than Louis felt the agitation of his mind encreased by the slowness that permitted recollection to crowd his thoughts with images. He changed his commands, and the driver set off on the spur towards the gates of Morewick.

Many an apprehension was in his bosom. Many a wringing reflection. How had he left that place? How did he return? And what would be the pangs of meeting, after the wreck of so many hopes!—

He was taking counsel of his manhood, to sustain with firmness the questions which must summon the shadows, whose torturing substance he had endured without a receding nerve;—when his carriage entered the gates of Morewick Park. Lost in self-recollection, it was only by the jerk of the horses in stopping before the mansion, that Louis knew he was arrived. The carriage door was opened. In that land of hospitality, the house-door also stood at large. He sprang from his vehicle into the hall. Servants were entering it from different avenues; but he passed through them all, and knew nothing of what he saw or did, till he found himself at the feet of his revered uncle.

He was clasped in the arms of his aunt; and Alice bathed his hand with her happy tears.

It was many minutes before a word was spoken. But every heart knew each other's language, and the folded hands of Mr. Athelstone, as he stood over his nephew, told to all who looked on him, that his grateful soul was then at the feet of his God.

The embrace with which Louis strained his aunt to his bosom, recalled her passing senses to recollection; and, throwing her arms round his neck, she wept there, almost to suffocation. While the Pastor, with eyes no less the witnesses of a joy that has not words, assisted his nephew to bear her to the settee, Louis put the venerable hand to his lips. The last time he so pressed it, he was possessed of a father whom he loved and honoured!—That father was now no more; and the pride with which he then dwelt on his name, was extinguished for ever! He would not allow the swelling sluices of his heart to give way, or even to intimate what was labouring there, by pressing that hand to his bosom!

"Dearest Louis!" cried Alice, who was the first to speak;—for her mother sat on the sofa with her arms still on the neck of her nephew, and gazing with anguish on his face:—"Dearest Louis!" cried her daughter, in a voice as plaintive as her mother's looks; "Oh, how you are changed!"

"Not in heart, Alice!" said he, turning his eyes tenderly upon her.

"Ah! that voice, is still his own!" cried Mrs. Coningsby, throwing herself upon his bosom, and weeping afresh. "Yes, Catherine;" said the Pastor, regarding the agitated groupe, with all the tenderness of his sainted spirit. "A veil has fallen over the lustre of that beauty you used to prize so much! but it is a veil only; the light of heaven is still behind it!"

It was not until this day of emotion was quite over; and that both Mrs. Coningsby and Alice had given their hands to the kneeling obeisance of Lorenzo, with rather the welcome of kindred than of superiors; and the calming solitude of night had schooled every heart to the necessity of, at least, assuming tranquillity, that the little circle at Morewick could fully feel the happiness of re-union.

Before Louis quitted his chamber next morning, the usual domestic groupe were assembled in the breakfast room. Mr. Athelstone, with pious gratitude, remarked to Mrs. Coningsby on the trying circumstances of his nephew's yet early life; and exulted in the integrity with which he had passed so fiery an ordeal.

"Yes," returned she, "many begin their contest when he has finished his. But he has not escaped the marks!" and she shuddered while she wiped the starting tear from her eye.

"Man's contest," rejoined the Pastor, "is not finished till he grounds his arms in the grave. That our nephew has so soon commenced his combat; that he has so bravely resisted what has overcome more veteran spirits; is a sign that much remains for him to do. The soldiers of our heavenly captain, are not taught in vain: they must struggle and conquer until the end; and then they will receive their rest and their reward!"

"Hitherto," replied Mrs. Coningsby, with almost audible sobs, "his discipline has been severe indeed! but altered as he is, never did I behold affliction so dignified. His eyes, in their brightest happiness, never looked so lovely as last night, in the wordless anguish of his soul."

"And yet, Catherine, you lament his bloom!"

"No, Mr. Athelstone, it is the cause of its loss, that fills me with regret."

"But I do;" cried Alice, "I lament the loss of all that was my former Louis! his light, ethereal step,—his look of radiance,—and his voice of such soul-entrancing gladness!—But now, his movements are slow; his cheek is wan and faded; and his voice is so full of pity, I could weep whenever he speaks."

"Give him time, my child," returned the Pastor; "the hand of recent sorrow is yet heavy on him. He must yield his tribute to Nature. Suffer him now, and Nature will reward us with an ample restoration of all his delighting powers."

Louis's entrance checked the reply of Alice. And now he was welcomed to the dear domestic breakfast table, with smiles, instead of the tears which on the foregoing night, lingered in every eye until the hour of retirement.

During the meal Mr. Athelstone made the conversation cheerful, by turning it on general subjects, and particularly enlarging on Sir Anthony's improved manner of life. He had thrown aside all his old, reprehensible habits, and preferring the occasional society of his niece Cornelia, (who, in consequence of the gout flying about him, was now with him at Cheltenham,) his days passed in the equable current of domestic comfort and social respectability.

While the Pastor pursued this discourse, and Louis listened to him with evident pleasure, Alice contemplated her cousin's face and figure; and at last wondered within herself, how she could have thought him so greatly altered. If any change had taken place in his figure, it unquestionably was to its advantage. A certain martial dignity was added to its former pliant grace. It was now a form where every god had seemed to have set his seal to shape the perfect man;—before, it was that of a beautiful youth,—the dawn of this checquered, but resplendent day!

If this were the case, it must then be his black garments, which had at first struck her with some melancholy idea of a change in his person as well as face! she scanned that face with equal scrutiny. To her poetic fancy, his still matchless smile played under the soft moon-light of his now pensive eyes, like the shadowed, yet scintillating wave of her native stream.

At the moment this romantic image crossed her mind, she descried a spot of a deeper hue than the rest, and of the form and tint of a faded leaf, upon his cheek.

"Dear Louis!" said she, pressing affectionately to his side, and putting her finger on the place; "what mark is that?—It was not there when you left us?"

All her cousin's wonted bloom suffused that pale cheek, and obliterated the mark, as she uttered the question. It was the remains of the wound he had received there, in defending the life of Don Ferdinand.

"Do not enquire of all things, sweet Alice!" returned he, as he pressed her hand to his lips.

But he said it with an accent and a look so fraught with tenderness, and a something implied besides, that Ferdinand immediately occurred to her mind, though she knew not why, and casting down her eyes with a blush; she again thought within herself:—

"How could I think that Louis was altered?"

Before the expiration of a week, he had communicated to the different members of the little circle, all that respectively most interested each. But it was only when alone with his revered uncle, that he laid open the undisguised history of all that had befallen him in his father's calamities and his own; the undisguised confession of his trials, his disappointments, and the present unnatural torpor of his soul.

The Pastor, with the gentleness of affection, and a knowledge that knew when to probe, to render the cure more radical, entered on all these discussions with wisdom and truth. He shewed Louis how mistaken had been his early conceptions of human nature; how idolatrous had been his estimation of beings, formed of the same dust and ashes as himself.

"I told you this from the first, my child!" said he; "and though your lips accorded, your spirit would not believe. But it is the error of most of us. We garnish finite man with the perfections of the infinite God. We fall down and worship the image we have made. We pray to it, we rest on it. But we soon find our trust is in a piece of clay. It has ears, and hears not; eyes, and sees not; and hands that cannot help!—Yes, Louis, all earthly idols are little more than blocks of wood; which might have been secure staves to hold us on our way; but when elevated to shrines, we find them things of naught. Now, my son, if we view all that are born of woman as erring creatures like ourselves; and accordingly love and assist, pardon and sustain them; we shall support, and be supported, through this travelling pilgrimage, till we at last lay down our heads in the grave, at peace with all mankind. But, on the reverse, when we look for perfection, and meet error, we are shocked; we resent and abhor; we do not forgive, we will not excuse; and they become our enemies from despair, whom the tender charities of a Christian spirit might have preserved as friends, and in time, persuaded to the hope of unerring purity!"

Louis acknowledged the truth of these observations. He had erred under them all, excepting that, of not knowing how to pardon; and there, his heart bore witness to itself, that he could forgive the hand that stabbed him.

"Yes, Sir;" replied he, "I know that in striving after excellence; to bear, and to forbear, is the duty of men on earth. Perfect virtue will be his happiness in Heaven."

"You sigh, very heavily, my dear Louis;" replied Mr. Athelstone, "while you acknowledge this!—But so right a judgement at so early an age, is cheaply purchased by the sweet uses of adversity!—you know I told you, in my first letter on the beginning of your misfortunes; that, may be you were only entered into a cloud, which would shed forth a gentle shower to refresh your virtues—and the event has proved it." "But not with gentle showers!" replied Louis with a smile of anguish.

"No, my child," answered the Pastor, tenderly regarding him; "but had you not required it, they would not have been so heavy."

"I believe it, Sir!" replied Louis rising from his chair, "I was proud, and I was ambitious. The world reigned in my heart, when you thought it possessed by a better principle. I was ignorant of my own state, till I was made to see my own likeness in a mirror—But we will not speak further on it!" cried he, interrupting himself,—"It is over,—quite over;—buried deep, deep—beneath the walls of Tetuan!"

Louis had touched a string that made every chord in his heart vibrate; and, he quitted the venerable presence, to recover composure in the recollections of solitude.