he one that
followed the night which witnessed his fearful visit to the "Devil's
Crag."

It is precisely at this part of my history that I love to pause for a
moment; a sort of breathing interval between the cloud that has been
long gathering, and the storm that is about to burst. And this interval
is not without its fleeting gleam of quiet and holy sunshine.

It was Madeline's first absence from her lover since their vows had
plighted them to each other; and that first absence, when softened by
so many hopes as smiled upon her, is perhaps one of the most touching
passages in the history of a woman's love. It is marvellous how many
things, unheeded before, suddenly become dear. She then feels what a
power of consecration there was in the mere presence of the one beloved;
the spot he touched, the book he read, have become a part of him--are
no longer inanimate--are inspired, and have a being and a voice. And the
heart, too, soothed in discovering so many new treasures, and opening
so delightful a world of memory, is not yet acquainted with that
weariness--that sense of exhaustion and solitude which are the true
pains of absence, and belong to the absence not of hope but regret.

"You are cheerful, dear Madeline," said Ellinor, "though you did not
think it possible, and he not here!"

"I am occupied," replied Madeline, "in discovering how much I loved
him."

We do wrong when we censure a certain exaggeration in the sentiments
of those who love. True passion is necessarily heightened by its very
ardour to an elevation that seems extravagant only to those who cannot
feel it. The lofty language of a hero is a part of his character;
without that largeness of idea he had not been a hero. With love, it
is the same as with glory: what common minds would call natural in
sentiment, merely because it is homely, is not natural, except to tamed
affections. That is a very poor, nay, a very coarse, love, in which the
imagination makes not the greater part. And the Frenchman, who censured
the love of his mistress because it was so mixed with the imagination,
quarrelled with the body, for the soul which inspired and preserved it.

Yet we do not say that Madeline was so possessed by the confidence of
her love, that she did not admit the intrusion of a single doubt or
fear; when she recalled the frequent gloom and moody fitfulness of
her lover--his strange and mysterious communings with self--the sorrow
which, at times, as on that S