m, and no longer Nisida the deaf
and dumb, but Nisida who could hear the fond language which he addressed
to her, and who could respond in the sweetest, most melting and
delicious tones that ever came from woman's lips.

For a long time their hearts were too full, alike for total silence or
connected conversation, and while the world from which they were cut off
was entirely forgotten, they gathered so much happiness from the few
words in which they indulged, and from all that they read in each
other's eyes, that the emotions which they experienced might have
furnished sensations for a lifetime.

At length--she scarcely knew how the subject began, although it might
naturally have arisen of its own spontaneous suggestion--Nisida found
herself speaking of the long period of deception which she had
maintained in relation to her powers of speech and hearing.

"Thou lovest me well, dearest Fernand," she said in her musical Italian
tones; "and thou would'st not create a pang in my heart? Then never seek
to learn wherefore, when at the still tender age of fifteen, I resolved
upon consummating so dreadful a sacrifice as to affect dumbness. The
circumstances were, indeed, solemnly grave and strangely important,
which demanded so awful a martyrdom. But well did I weigh all the misery
and all the peril that such a self-devotion was sure to entail upon me.
I knew that I must exercise the most stern--the most remorseless--the
most inflexible despotism over my emotions--that I must crush as it were
the very feelings of my soul--that I must also observe a caution so
unwearied and so constantly wakeful, that it would amount to a
sensitiveness the most painful--and that I must prepare myself to hear
the merry jest without daring to smile, or the exciting narrative of the
world's stirring events without suffering my countenance to vary a hue!
Oh! I calculated--I weighed all this, and yet I was not appalled by the
immensity of the task. I knew the powers of my own mind, and I did not
deceive myself as to their extent. But, ah! how fearful was it at first
to hear the sounds of human voices, and dare not respond to them; how
maddening at times was it to listen to conversation in which I longed to
join, and yet be compelled to sit like a passionless statue! But mine
was a will of iron strength--a resolution of indomitable power! Even
when alone when I knew that I should not be overheard--I never essayed
the powers of my voice, I never murm