ins who, despising honest
praise, renounced every honourable bond of amity, to whom treachery and
cruelty were become habitual; and that he commanded desperadoes, who,
setting no value on their own lives, kept his in their power. Such, Sir,
was the state of your father's army, and such the secret hostility of
those for whom he fought. You may condemn his embarking in their cause,
his timidity, his irresolution, his fluctuating variableness, but not
his deliberate cruelty or private malice. After Eustace had drawn the
lot of death, the power of the general could not save him from an army
lost to every generous feeling, and thirsting for revenge."

To know that his father had rather been guilty of the transgressions of
frail man than of the horrible enormities of a demon, was an invaluable
consolation to De Vallance. But still Eustace had fallen under the
sentence of Bellingham, and himself consequently been banished from
Isabel. Dr. Lloyd interrupted his mournful reverie by inquiring what
were his future views.

"When you described Eustace going to execution," returned he, "you
appealed to the sympathy of a heart eternally separated from the object
of a pure, cherished affection. Read that letter. Conceive it written by
a woman whose beauty is her smallest praise, and then advise me how to
bestow the unvalued remnant of a life which must be spent in exile from
her."

Dr. Lloyd perused Isabel's farewel, and inquired if her brother's death
was the only obstacle to their union.

"Yes," replied De Vallance. "I had renounced the principles in which I
was educated, abjured the aggrandizement and affluence which my parents'
crimes had purchased; I had her promise, sanctioned by her father's full
consent, as a reward for services I was so fortunate as to render them.
We were to have fled to Holland, rich in the possession of domestic
happiness and decent competence, when that fatal intelligence----"

"Come, young gentleman," interrupted Dr. Lloyd, "you meditate too
deeply. I see you want society. The hardships you have undergone have
overwhelmed you. I must remove you to my own cottage. I keep a cordial
there which I never trust out of my own custody. I see your disease, and
know my remedy will complete your cure."

"Sir," returned De Vallance, "we are talking of something infinitely
more important than life. I know my disease is at present trifling, the
effect of anxiety acting too forcibly on a fatigued body. I could say