"I turned away without answering, only ordering Zillah to have done with such nonsense, and go to her mistress. She walked on a little behind me, with more meekness than was natural to her; but I was troubled with a sort of dread, which nothing in the circumstances could explain.

"It was all natural enough. In the name of heaven, what had I suspected? I did not know—I do not now! but I felt faint and sick with some horrible dread, to which I could give neither name or reason.

"'Miss Mabel,' said Zillah, coming to my side. 'I suppose you think I told you a story this morning.'

"'Yes,' I said, 'I saw you give that money to the old woman.'

"'I was ashamed to tell you what I really wanted, for fear you would laugh at me,' she replied, 'I never do tell the least bit of a fib that I'm not found out.'

"'That ought to teach you not to tell any,' I said, rather severely."'Indeed I don't, Miss Mabel—unless it's about some foolishness like this. I'm not a big story teller—don't think I am.'

"'I shall not unless you force me to,' I answered. 'Come, we must find your mistress now.'

"I walked quickly on, and she followed me in silence. Once I glanced back at her—there was an expression on her face which puzzled me, yes, almost made me afraid. I could imagine Clytemnestra holding her midnight watch, with a face like that—Lady Macbeth waiting for her husband's return, with eyes like those—oh, I had grown so fanciful and silly during those past days.

"We found Mr. James Harrington with his mother, who was just driving away in the carriage.

"When it came back, I saw him return to the Eatons, who seemed to occupy him entirely. Feeling myself completely unregarded, I wandered off by myself, interested in the strange people that surrounded me.

"I looked about and found that I had lost sight of the whole party. I was not frightened, because the fair grounds were in full view, and I could find my way back easily enough, but I was a little amazed to think that my presence had been of so little consequence to the gentlemen of the party, that I had been permitted to steal away unnoticed.

"I walked on among the tents—nobody looked at me unpleasantly or spoke rudely to me, and when my first feeling of pique had subsided, I was not sorry to have an opportunity of examining more closely these strange and incomprehensible people who, during so many ages, have kept up their distinctive manners and customs, as much a mystery now as when they first made their appearance among the inhabitants of Europe.

"Such picturesque looking men, lazily basking in the noon-tide sun—such groups of lovely children, that would have sent Murillo into ecstacies—such beautiful girls, whose every movement had a willowy, sensuous grace that the women of no other people ever possessed—weird, witch-like old crones, with such depths of wickedness in their fiery eyes, that in looking at them one could easily have believed in the old-time evidence of those who made bargains for their souls with the Evil One. On I wandered, sometimes stopping to admire the children, or speak a few words to the young girls.

"While I was thus occupied, James Harrington joined me, and began speaking of his mother.

"'She is getting worse,' he said, 'and I can do nothing for her. It seems as if the presence of this slave girl has a baleful influence on every one she approaches!'

"I looked at him wonderingly. Why had he opened that subject with me. I had no wish to discuss it, even in reference to his mother. Before I could answer him, General Harrington and the Eatons joined us, and we all walked back to the hotel together.

"I went at once to Mrs. Harrington's room. She was lying on a couch near the window, with her hands clasped, and her eyes closed; but I saw the lids quivering, and discovered heavy tears dropping one by one, on the cushion beneath her head.

"'Are you so ill,' I said, sitting down on the edge of the couch and kissing her troubled forehead.

"'Ill!' she sobbed, lifting both arms toward my neck, like an unhappy child, 'Oh Mabel, my heart is broken. I shall never, never be well again!'

"She trembled all over, and seemed ready to go into convulsions in my arms.

"'What is it,' I said. 'What could have happened to distress you so?'

"She looked into my face so helplessly, that my soul yearned toward her.

"'Tell me, oh tell me of the trouble, for it is trouble, and nothing else,' I said, holding her close in my arms, for I felt that we were fellow-sufferers, and that my heart must ache with something more painful than sympathy.

"She began to tremble again, and clung closer to me.

"'It was foolish. I did wrong, but who would have thought what would follow. I—I saw him going toward that large tent, where the music was. Zillah had gone in just before, while I was buying some embroidery of a woman. You had all walked on—I wanted to speak with Zillah, and followed him.'

"'Go on,' I said, as well as the pain at my heart would permit of speech—for she stopped suddenly, and made a faint effort to leave the clasp of my arms. 'Go on, you cannot feel this more than I do.'

"'Ah, you love me so, thank God for that.'

"'And you can trust me, I would not speak of this, dear friend, to a living soul, not to save my own life.'

"'It is not that, Mabel, but I have loved him so,—been so proud of him. Never, till this day, have I known what it was to suspect any one dear to me. Now it is not suspicion, but certainty. He loves her, Mabel! My own servant! I saw her clinging to his arm, while those wild girls were dancing before them. I heard him tell her how much more beautiful she was than any woman he had ever seen. Don't look at me so wildly, Mabel! I cannot repeat the words, but they are buried in here.'

"'And you heard this, there is no mistake.'

"'Mistake, oh if there could be!'

"'Still this man is—'

"'I know it—the shame and disgrace must be buried here. I dare not speak of it, dare not reproach him—for there is one who loves me so dearly that he would take revenge, and there might be bloodshed as well as perfidy. Oh Mabel, I am glad you did not make yourself a slave by loving as I wished. All this is terrible.'"'Yes,' I said hoarsely, 'It is terrible, but it does not take me by surprise.'

"'Then you have suspected something—oh Mabel, keep that girl away from me. I will be silent, I will do anything a good woman ought, but the sight of her will be too great a torment.'

"I promised to keep Zillah away if that were possible, without giving a reason, and again pledged my word to hold all that she had said, secret as the grave. But I went to my own room, fell upon the bed, and passed into an agony of jealous shame.

"During the last two weeks Mrs. Harrington is much worse. All her old complaints have come back, and she lies upon her sofa all day long, weary and languid. Nothing can equal the devotion of her husband; as for the son, his attentions are unremitting; does he guess why she is so much worse, and is he striving by kindness to silence her unspoken reproaches? She gives no sign of the trouble that is sapping away her life, not a word has passed between us since that day. The Eatons have left us. The atmosphere of a sick room disturbs them. Worse and worse—alas! I greatly fear this gentle lady will never leave Seville alive. The last remnant of strength seems to be dying out of that fragile form.

"Zillah is most attentive—always by her door—always ready to be of service, yet I loathe and fear the girl. There are times when her eyes have a look that makes me shudder, and I long to remove that pale, gentle creature from her care. But, strange enough, General Harrington has taken a singular liking to the girl, and insists upon it that no one can prepare his wife's medicines, or soothe her, so well. Poor lady, she must submit, or destroy all her husband's respect for the son who has wounded her so.

"Weaker and weaker—alas! poor lady, she seems to have no real illness, but fades away calmly and softly, like a flower that the frost had kissed to death."Harrington watches the gentle decline with silent anguish, that I can feel, while I bitterly condemn him. How cold and distant this trouble renders me! He speaks sometimes of his fears as she grows worse and worse, but it is with mournful restraint, and when I lift my look to his, or attempt those broken words of comfort that spring naturally to the lips, he turns away without reply, as if my attempt at consolation had only deepened his remorse. Was that wild confession on the raft all a dream? Had terror and privation rendered me delirious? Could these words, so deeply written in my memory, have been only a wild hallucination? Is this man the same being I almost worshiped then?

"She is dead—oh, heavens! She died last night, with no one near but the slave, and, as the girl Zillah said, without a struggle or a sigh.

"The slave came to my room just at daylight, weeping and wringing her hands in such distress, that she fairly terrified me, when I saw her standing in the open door.

"'Oh,' she said, tossing her arms on high, 'she is gone, she is gone.' I watched her, young mistress, just like a mother hangs over her sick child. She made a motion with her hand,—I thought she wanted more drink, but she turned her face on the pillow, and looked at me so wild, I couldn't turn my eyes away, but sat watching, watching, watching till her face turned gray under my eyes, and I could see the white edges of the teeth, between her lips, as they fell more and more apart. I reached out my hand to touch hers. It was cold as snow, but her eyes were wide open, looking straight into mine, dull and heavy, as if they had been filling with frost.

"In the gray light of that morning, I went down to the death chamber. General Harrington and James received me in mournful silence. I had no heart even for unspoken reproaches, there. If ever forgiveness was glorified, I saw it on that sweet, dear face."We passed a gloomy day. The shock has been terrible to James, terrible to us all—for the General is greatly disturbed, and, as for the slave-girl, her grief is fearful; she raves rather than weeps, and trembles like an aspen at the mention of her dead lady's name.

"With the solemn burial services of the Catholic Church, we have consigned the remains of this lovely woman to her grave, and now my loneliness is complete. My own poor heart seems to have partaken of the chill that has quenched her life. I am weary of this beautiful land—weary of everything—alone and unloved; for now I am almost sure my own wild brain coined the words that seemed to come from his lips in the storm—alone, unloved—what remains for me but——

"A great disappointment has fallen upon General Harrington. A will is found, and every dollar of his wife's property is left to her son. All this seems incomprehensible. I pity the proud old man.

——"It is all over now! Oh, Heaven, that I should have so deceived myself! Harrington loves another—Lucy whom he has known almost since childhood, and from whom a series of untoward circumstances separated him. There is, there can be no doubt—no room for a single hope—the General himself informed me of it to-day.

"I cannot write—I cannot even think! There is a strange confusion in my brain—a fever in my heart which give me no rest. I long for some one to advise me—some one to whom I can look for sympathy—but I have no counsellor. Kindred—mine are in the grave! Friends—the last one sleeps in the cemetery yonder—in the wide world I am utterly alone. The General grows kinder to me daily, but to him how could I speak of all these things? No! I must bury the secret deep, deep in my own heart—must endure this suffering in silence and alone.

"I have but one wish now—could I but be the means of uniting James Harrington with the woman he loves. The only consolation left to me, would be to know that he was happy, and that it was to me he owed that happiness. But I can do nothing; the General only hinted at some mysterious history, and he requested me to consider all that he had revealed as sacred. Is this the secret? Does Lucy Eaton suspect the unworthiness which it kills me to know?

"Six months in a convent. It is too late to look back, or to retract anything I have promised. I have consented to become General Harrington's wife—to fill the place of one who took me to her heart as if I had been her own child, bestowing upon me the fondness which I could have no right to claim, except from a mother.

"The change I had remarked in the General's manner was not fancy, as I strove to think. He desires to make me his wife. He alluded to it yesterday for the first time, and to-night I gave him my answer. I can but confess that the arguments he employed were just; a young girl could not remain in the house with a man no older than he without being connected to him by a nearer tie than that which binds us. He spoke to me very kindly, more gently and tenderly than I had thought he could do. He believes that I have formed no other attachment, or, if not entirely heart free, it was but a girlish fancy, which had no real basis. He assures me that I shall be happy as his wife, but my heart answers how impossible that is! I do not ask happiness—let me but find quiet and contentment—I seek no more.

"A year has gone by. We are in America again. General Harrington will join me to-morrow. Ay, it is better thus—I would have it over. Perhaps, in the peaceful home I shall find in my native land, I may learn to still this poor heart to rest. I long to return.

"He is not here. He left us when we reached Madrid, for the purpose of entering France through the Basque countries; but this month the General received another letter from him—he is staying in Italy. The General, it seems, had written that he had obtained my consent to become his wife, and the answer is—'Whatever will conduce to your happiness, and that of the lady, must be acceptable to me.'

"Nothing more—not even an expression of astonishment! Yes, it is better thus! I will marry General Harrington—he is the only being on earth who cares for me—the only one who would seek to render me happy. In a few years he will be an old man, and the trust and friendship I now feel, will be sufficient to his contentment. This firm and trusting friendship I shall always be willing to give. If I do not accept him, where am I to turn for a protector—of what avail is my great wealth, since it cannot win for me a home in any human heart?

"I marvel at my own calmness—pray Heaven that when too late, I do not find that it has been only the apathy of despair. I will be calm—my hushed and trembling heart shall at least be silent—by-and-by it will, perhaps, be numbed into insensibility. I can expect nothing more; for I know that the uprooted flowers of a love like mine can have no second-blossom, the sweet fountain of affection once wasted, its waters may never flow again.

"I will write no more in my journal for a season—why should I make this record of my weary life—this plaint of my troubled soul?

"I have suffered the one terrible grief of a lifetime; of what avail to inscribe upon these pages a memento of a lasting wretchedness!"