tterly
unworthy of her devoted affection, as she had herself too strong a proof
to doubt, Nina still owed to him the duty of a wife. She had severed
other sacred ties, in a way they can never be severed without ultimately
bringing grief and remorse to the heart of the guilty one; but she now
must abide by the consequences of her fault, and had no power to quit
him to whom she had bound herself, even to visit the deathbed of a
father. It was painful, however, to Ada, to reflect what must be the
ultimate fate of her lovely and interesting companion, when the pirate's
already waning love was burnt out--when the cast on which she had staked
her all on earth was lost for ever; or, should the lawless adventurer
meet the fate his daring expeditions seemed to court, and when death
should claim his own, she should learn that he whom she had so truly
loved was a murderer, and a robber, and had died the death of a
malefactor, what anguish, what shame, was in store for her--what a
dreary future.

The two girls, both equally beautiful in their separate styles, sat
together, without speaking, for some time, lost in their own
reflections. Both were sad--for one was a prisoner, without a prospect
of release: to the mind of the other, a picture of the home of her
youth, and her deserted, dying father, had been conjured up with the
vividness with which they had never before presented themselves, and
some pangs of remorse were agitating her mind. They were startled by a
loud peal of thunder, which reverberated through the sky, and looking
out through the casement they beheld the whole air of heaven covered
with dark rolling clouds, and the sea a mass of white foam, which a
blast, like a whirlwind, blew furiously over the surface; while the
sullen roar of the lately aroused waves was heard as they lashed the
rocks beneath the cliffs. One of those sudden tempests had arisen,
which at times visit the shores of the Mediterranean with peculiar fury;
their anger, like the rage of a human being, though short, yet causing
havoc and destruction wherever it falls. The wind, as it increased,
howled and whistled through the ruined building; the lightning darted,
with vivid flashes, from the lowering sky; and the waves, worked into
fury, rose every instant higher and higher, till they appeared like the
water of a boiling cauldron, as their white-headed crests leaped up
towards the tower, which they seemed to shake to the very base.

Marianna,