our absence has been remarked." They
walked in silence down the alley which led to the ball-room.

Two hours after, all was calm and silent where every thing had been gay
and brilliant. The lights were out, and the darkness of night replaced
the thousand lamps which a few minutes before were seen to glitter
within the palace windows. But one person in all the Hotel of the Duke
of Palma was awake. A woman sat alone, in a room of rare elegance, still
wearing her ball attire, but with her hair dishevelled and her heart
crushed. Her eyes were fixed and dry, and yet red with the tears she had
shed. She was in all the brilliancy of youth and beauty, but which was
already defaced somewhat, by the iron claws of sorrow, which by
sleepless nights and the ravages of jealousy seemed resolved yet more to
lacerate her. With her head resting on her hands, beautiful and touching
as Canova's Magdalen, she looked with sorrow over the papers which lay
strewn on a rich ebony desk before her. A lamp, the upper portion of
which was shrouded in blue tulle, cast a pale and sad light over her
brow. Her fine white hand rested on the papers which she seemed afraid
to touch. "No," said she, "it is impossible; all that these contain are
but falsehoods. No, this journal of my heart, written by myself, day by
day, cannot be a romance created by the imagination in its delirium. No!
all I wrote there was true. I felt the joys and bitternesses, yet it now
seems to me a dream. A dream! can it be a dream?"

Taking up the papers convulsively she read as follows:--"It is he. I
have seen him again and free. I thought that he, like myself, had
contracted a life-long obligation. Is this joy or grief? The ties he was
about to form, the ties the mere thought of which caused me a terrible
anguish, were imposed on me by myself. Oh my God! what have I done? What
perfidious demon inspired me when I yielded to another than to him the
_right_ to love me? When I promised a love I knew could be given to no
other than to him? Why on the day of that fatal marriage did I see him
only when I was about to leave the church? I would have broken off had I
stood at the foot of the altar--I would have told him who was about to
give me his name--ask me not to perjure myself! do not ask me to pledge
you a faith I cannot keep! my heart, my soul, my love are his. I
thought, alas! because he was not free that I too might cease to be. I
fancied my agony to be power, my spite to be cou