vers over your life, Sybil; and in vain
you would forget what haunts your heart. One not less gifted than him;
as good, as gentle, as gracious; once too breathed in my ear the accents
of joy. He was, like myself, the child of an old house, and Nature had
invested him with every quality that can dazzle and can charm. But his
heart was as pure, and his soul as lofty, as his intellect and frame
were bright,--" and Ursula paused.

Sybil pressed the hand of Ursula to her lips and whispered, "Speak on."

"The dreams of by-gone days," continued Ursula in a voice of emotion,
"the wild sorrows than I can recall, and yet feel that I was wisely
chastened. He was stricken in his virtuous pride, the day before he was
to have led me to that altar where alone I found the consolation that
never fails. And thus closed some years of human love, my Sybil," said
Ursula, bending forward and embracing her. "The world for a season
crossed their fair current, and a power greater than the world forbade
their banns; but they are hallowed; memory is my sympathy; it is soft
and free, and when he came here to enquire after you, his presence and
agitated heart recalled the past."

"It is too wild a thought," said Sybil, "ruin to him, ruin to all. No,
we are severed by a fate as uncontrollable as severed you dear friend;
ours is a living death."

"The morrow is unforeseen," said Ursula. "Happy indeed would it be for
me, my Sybil, that your innocence should be enshrined within these holy
walls, and that the pupil of my best years, and the friend of my serene
life, should be my successor in this house. But I feel a deep persuasion
that the hour has not arrived for you to take the step that never can be
recalled."

So saying, Ursula embraced and dismissed Sybil; for the conversation,
the last passages of which we have given, had Occurred when Sybil
according to her wont on Saturday afternoon had come to request the
permission of the Lady Superior to visit her father.

It was in a tolerably spacious and not discomfortable chamber, the first
floor over the printing-office of the Mowbray Phalanx, that Gerard had
found a temporary home. He had not long returned from his factory,
and pacing the chamber with a disturbed step, he awaited the expected
arrival of his daughter.

She came; the faithful step, the well-known knock; the father and the
daughter embraced; he pressed to his heart the child who had clung to
him through so many trials, and who had