of his hopes; and which
twelve years had left unchanged, except to mature the loveliness of
earliest youth into more womanly beauty and expression, and to deepen
the pensiveness, that always marked it, into a shade of habitual
melancholy.

"Adele, are _you_ too leagued against me?" resumed La Tour, with
recovered firmness, and looking stedfastly on her; "have _you_ entered
into the secret counsels of my foe? and are you sent hither to torture
me with your presence? to remind me, by it, of past, but never to be
forgotten, injuries--of the worse than infernal malice, with which he
has ever pursued me, and for which, I exult in the hope of one day
calling him to a deadly reckoning!"

"Speak you thus of my husband?" she asked, in an accent of reproof; "and
think you such language is meet to be addressed to the ear of a wife?"

"Aye, of your husband, lady," said La Tour, yielding to his chafed and
bitter feelings; "he was once my friend, too; the friend who won my
confidence, only to abuse it, who basely calumniated me, in absence, who
treacherously stole from me the dearest treasure of my heart. Adele," he
continued more calmly, "I do not love you _now_; that youthful passion,
which was once the sun of my existence, has lost its strength in other
ties, and sterner duties; but, can I meet your eye again, and not recall
the perfidy which drove me forth, from friends and country, an
adventurer in the pathless wilderness? can I look upon your face, and
not curse the wretch, who won from me its smiles, who burst our love
asunder, in all its purity and fervor, while yet unruffled by one shade
of doubt, one fear of disappointment?"

"La Tour," said Mad. d'Aulney, striving to conceal her emotion, "why all
this bitter invective? now, indeed, most vain and useless! why wound my
ear, by accusations which _I_ surely do not merit, and which is a most
ungrateful theme, when uttered against one whom I am bound, by every
tie of duty and interest, to respect! If you believe me innocent"--

"I do believe you are most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously;
"yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous
principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved.
No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you;
you, like myself, was the victim of that baseness, which invented a tale
of falsehood to deceive you, of that meanness, which flattered your
father's ambitious hopes, by a