h their effect, he will remain with her some time longer."

"And, meanwhile, I shall know nothing of Amabel," cried Leonard, in a
tone of bitter disappointment.

"Your anxiety is natural," returned Thirlby, "but you may rest
satisfied, if Doctor Hodges has seen her, he has done all that human aid
can effect. But as you must perforce wait his coming forth, I will
endeavour to beguile the tedious interval by relating to you so much of
my history as refers to Nizza Macascree."

After a brief pause, he commenced. "You must know, then, that in my
youth I became desperately enamoured of a lady named Isabella Morley.
She was most beautiful--but I need not enlarge upon her attractions,
since you have beheld her very image in Nizza. When I first met her she
was attached to another, but I soon rid myself of my rival. I quarrelled
with him, and slew him in a duel. After a long and urgent suit, for the
successful issue of which I was mainly indebted to my rank and wealth,
which gave great influence with her parents, Isabella became mine. But I
soon found out she did not love me. In consequence of this discovery, I
became madly jealous, and embittered her life and my own by constant,
and, now I know too well, groundless suspicions. She had borne me a son,
and in the excess of my jealous fury, fancying the child was not my own,
I threatened to put it to death. This violence led to the unhappy result
I am about to relate. Another child was born, a daughter--need I say
Nizza, or to give her her proper name, Isabella, for she was so
christened after her mother--and one night--one luckless
night,--maddened by some causeless doubt, I snatched the innocent babe
from her mother's arms, and if I had not been prevented by the
attendants, who rushed into the room on hearing their mistress's
shrieks, should have destroyed her. After awhile, I became pacified, and
on reviewing my conduct more calmly on the morrow, bitterly reproached
myself, and hastened to express my penitence to my wife. 'You will never
have an opportunity of repeating your violence,' she said; 'the object
of your cruel and unfounded suspicions is gone.'--'Gone!' I exclaimed;
'whither?' And as I spoke I looked around the chamber. But the babe was
nowhere to be seen. In answer to my inquiries, my wife admitted that she
had caused her to be removed to a place of safety, but refused, even on
my most urgent entreaties, accompanied by promises of amended conduct,
to tell me where