nd happiness--your heart, Edwin!"

"Toinette!" he exclaimed--but he could say no more. She had thrown
herself into his arms and hidden her streaming eyes, her glowing lips
upon his breast.

"Calm yourself!" he ventured to murmur in her ear after a long pause,
his lips touching her hair; suddenly she raised her head, and her face
wore an expression of such blended happiness and anguish, that all his
strength failed. "This is too much!" he faltered. "Spare me! You do not
know what I have suffered!"

"I do know," she whispered amid her kisses. "I knew it in the first
hour we were together--you're still mine, as you have ever been--you're
mine, mine--as I've been your's, ever since I became a woman."

At this moment the clock in the old castle tower slowly struck twelve.
A shudder ran through the frame of the man who clasped to his heart the
woman who had been the object of his first love. It seemed as if a cold
spectral hand was passing over his heart, quenching the fierce glow
that threatened to destroy him. He released his lips from hers, and
gently pushed away the slight figure that clung to his breast. "What
have we done?" he exclaimed, retreating a step and averting his eyes.

"We have drunk when we were thirsty," said the impassioned woman,
without lowering her glance. "Oh! it was but a drop on the hot stone!
Why do you no longer look into my eyes, Edwin? Are you ashamed that you
still love me, because in the old days I was childish and cold, and
knew not what I did? The curse was still upon me, the curse of my
birth, for which I've had to atone through all these years of
suffering, to become at last another creature, a happy creature, new
born through your love, Edwin! When I first saw you, early this
morning, my heart received a blow that burst the lid of the coffin in
which it was buried; and in the forest, how your every word, your
glance, the pressure of your hand said to me: 'what are four years to a
feeling that's eternal? I'm the same man, whom once you made miserable,
but now all will be well again, since my happiness is yours.' Look into
my eyes, Edwin, and tell me, if you can, that I have deceived myself!"

She had approached him and taken his hand. He did not withdraw it, but
the glance that met hers was now so sad that she shrank back and let it
fall.

"You have seen aright, my poor friend," he said in a hollow tone. "I
_am_ the same man, whom you made miserable. Yet nevertheless you have
deceive