y fault of the young wife,
then sixteen, had been that of loving her husband too tenderly--nay,
even in adoring one who repaid her love with relentless severity and
faithlessness, under which the poor Amelia drooped, and, in the second
year of her marriage, died; but not without having bequeathed to the
unworthy husband all the property over which she had any control.

These were the very means by which R. now was enabled to pursue his
brilliant and reckless career. He always made his court to one of the
beauties of the day. He had been several times betrothed, but had broken
off the affair again without the smallest regard to the reputation or to
the feelings of the girl, upon whom by this means he had cast a
stain--nay, indeed, he secretly regarded it as an honour to himself to
make such victims, and to cause hearts to bleed for him--that cooled the
burning thirst of his self-love.

The world did justice to his agreeable and splendid talents; but the
noble of his own sex, as well as of the other, esteemed him but very
lightly, inasmuch as they considered him a person without true worth.
The thoughts of a union between this man and his beloved daughter
occasioned a storm in the bosom of the Judge.

Such was the information regarding the man whom she loved that met Eva
on her return home. Everybody was unanimously against him. What Eva
spoke in his excuse produced no effect; what she said of his true and
deep devotion to her, evidently nobody credited; and over her own love,
which had made the world so beautiful, which had produced the most
delicious feelings in her breast, and had opened to her a heaven of
happiness, people mourned and wept, and regarded it as a misfortune,
nay, even as a degradation. Wounded to the inmost of her soul, Eva drew
herself back, as it were, from her own family, and accused them to
herself of selfishness and unreasonableness. Louise, perhaps, deserved
somewhat of this reproach; but Leonore was pure, pure as the angels of
heaven; still Leonore mourned over Eva's love, and on that account Eva
closed her heart against her also.

The variance, which in consequence of all this existed between Eva and
her family, became only yet greater when Major R. arrived, shortly after
her, at the city. He was a tall handsome man, of perhaps
five-and-thirty; of a haughty, but somewhat trifling exterior; his
countenance was gay and blooming, and his look clear and bold. Great
practice in the world, and an