ed, anxious and trembling, for her lover. Her
woman, who had accompanied her, thinking of more terrestrial concerns
than love, left her, at her desire. She could not rest long; she walked,
agitating and expecting, to and fro the long and half-furnished chamber
which characterises the Italian palace. At length, her eye fell on an
open letter on a writing-table at one corner of the room. She glanced
over it mechanically,--certain words suddenly arrested her attention.
Were those words--words of passion--addressed to her? If not, O Heaven!
to whom? She obeyed, as she ever did, the impulse of the moment, and
read what follows:

"Constance--As I write that word how many remembrances rush upon
me!--for how many years has that name been a talisman to my heart,
waking its emotions at will! You are the first woman I ever really
loved: you rejected me, yet I could not disdain you. You became
another's but my love could not desert you. Your hand wrote the history
of my life after the period when we met,--my habits--my thoughts--you
influenced and coloured them all! And now, Constance, you are free; and
I love you more fervently than ever! And you--yes, you would not reject
me now; you have grown wiser, and learned the value of a heart. And yet
the same Fate that divided us hitherto will divide us now; all obstacles
but one are passed away--of that one you shall hear and judge.

"When we parted, Constance, years ago, I did not submit tamely to the
burning remembrance you bequeathed me; I sought to dissipate your
image, and by wooing others to forget yourself. Need I say, that to know
another was only to remember you the more? But among the other and
far less worthy objects of my pursuit was one whom, had I not seen you
first, I might have loved as ardently as I do you; and in the first
flush of emotion, and the heat of sudden events, I imagined that I did
so love her. She was an orphan, a child in years and in the world; and
I was all to her--I am, all to her. She is not mine by the ties of the
Church; but I have pledged a faith to her equally sacred and as strong.
Shall I break that faith? shall I betray that trust? shall I crush a
heart that has always been mine--mine more tenderly than yours, rich in
a thousand gifts and resources, ever was or ever can be? Shall I,--sworn
to protect her--I, who have already robbed her of fame and friends, rob
her now of father, brother, lover, husband, the world itself,--for I am
all to her? Ne