ays be noted, that after such harmless
aberrations of the mind, Madeline seemed more collected and patient in
thought, and for the moment, even stronger in frame than before. Yet the
body evidently pined and languished, and each week made palpable decay
in her vital powers.

Every time Aram saw her, he was startled at the alteration; and kissing
her cheek, her lips, her temples, in an agony of grief, wondered that
to him alone it was forbidden to weep. Yet after all, when she was gone,
and he again alone, he could not but think death likely to prove to her
the most happy of earthly boons. He was not sanguine of acquittal, and
even in acquittal, a voice at his heart suggested insuperable barriers
to their union, which had not existed when it was first anticipated.

"Yes, let her die," he would say, "let her die; she at least is
certain of Heaven!" But the human infirmity clung around him, and
notwithstanding this seeming resolution in her absence, he did not mourn
the less, he was not stung the less, when he saw her again, and beheld
a new character from the hand of death graven upon her form. No; we may
triumph over all weakness, but that of the affections. Perhaps in this
dreary and haggard interval of time, these two persons loved each other
more purely, more strongly, more enthusiastically, than they had ever
done at any former period of their eventful history. Over the hardest
stone, as over the softest turf, the green moss will force its verdure
and sustain its life!

CHAPTER IV.

THE EVENING BEFORE THE TRIAL.--THE COUSINS.--THE CHANGE IN
MADELINE.--THE FAMILY OF GRASSDALE MEET ONCE MORE BENEATH ONE
ROOF.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
For Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects.
.............
[Hope] is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper back of death;
Who gently would dissolve the bands of death
Which false Hope lingers in extremity?
--Richard II.

It was the evening before the trial. Lester and his daughters lodged
at a retired and solitary house in the suburbs of the town of York; and
thither, from the village some miles distant, in which he had chosen his
own retreat, Walter now proceeded across fields laden with the ripening
corn. The last and the richest month of summer had commenced, but the
harvest was not yet begun, and deep and g