n; how on another
he had taken pity on a helpless old man, and singly had defended him
against a host of bloodthirsty enemies. He also spoke to her of the
sorrow of his master on account of the ingratitude and deceptions he had
experienced, and Natalie's eyes filled with tears as, with reproachful
glances, she asked of Heaven how it could have permitted the virtue of
this noble unknown hero to be so severely tried, and the baseness of
mankind to trouble him.

"That is it, then," Ribas would often say; "he diffuses happiness
everywhere around him, while he himself has it not! He makes glad and
cheerful faces wherever he appears, and his own is the only serious and
sad brow. Mankind have made him hopeless, and for himself he no longer
believes in happiness!"

Ah, how then did the heart of this innocent child tremble, and how she
longed to find some means for restoring his belief in happiness.

"But why does he not come to those who love him?" asked she. "Why does
he decline the thanks of those whose hearts are truly devoted to him?
Ah, in our humid eyes and joy-beaming faces he would recognize the
truthfulness of our feelings! Why, then, comes he not?"

"I will tell you," said Ribas, with a smile; "he hates women, because
the only one he ever loved was false to him, and now his love is changed
to ardent hatred of all women!"

"I shall therefore never see him!" sighed the girl, hanging her head
with the sadness of disappointment.

This expectation, this constantly increasing impatience, rendered her
inaccessible to any other feeling, any other thought. He of whom she
did not know even the name, was sent by Paulo, and therefore had
she believed and confided in him from the first. Now had she already
forgotten that she had confided in him on Paulo's account; she believed
in him on his own account, and Paulo had retreated into the background.
Occasionally also the bloody image of poor Carlo presented itself to her
mind, and she secretly reproached herself for having mourned him for
so short a time, for having so soon forgotten that faithful,
self-sacrificing friend.

But even these reproaches were soon silenced when with a throbbing bosom
she thought of this new friend, who like a divinity hovered over her
at an infinite and unattainable distance, and whose mysteriously active
nearness replaced both of those friends she had lost, and for whom she
could no longer mourn.

HE!

"It is now high time!" said Josep