ght
it kinder to favour the artifice than to complain of it. I remained
silent for some moments, and I then gave vent to the sanguine
expectations for the future which my new treasure entitled me to form.
I had already narrated to her the adventure of the day before: I now
repeated the purport of my last interview with Oswald; and, growing more
and more elated as I proceeded, I dwelt at last upon the description of
my inheritance, as glowingly as if I had already recovered it. I painted
to her imagination its rich woods and its glassy lake, and the fitful
and wandering brook that, through brake and shade, went bounding on
its wild way; I told her of my early roamings, and dilated with a
boy's rapture upon my favourite haunts. I brought visibly before her
glistening and eager eyes the thick copse where hour after hour, in
vague verses and still vaguer dreams, I had so often whiled away the
day; the old tree which I had climbed to watch the birds in their glad
mirth, or to listen unseen to the melancholy sound of the forest deer;
the antique gallery and the vast hall which, by the dim twilights, I
had paced with a religious awe, and looked upon the pictured forms of my
bold fathers, and mused high and ardently upon my destiny to be; the old
gray tower which I had consecrated to myself, and the unwitnessed path
which led to the yellow beach, and the wide gladness of the solitary
sea; the little arbour which my earliest ambition had reared, that
looked out upon the joyous flowers and the merry fountain, and, through
the ivy and the jessamine, wooed the voice of the bird, and the murmur
of the summer bee; and, when I had exhausted my description, I turned to
Isora, and said in a lower tone, "And I shall visit these once more, and
with you!"

Isora sighed faintly, and it was not till I had pressed her to speak
that she said:--

"I wish I could deceive myself, Morton, but I cannot--I cannot root from
my heart an impression that I shall never again quit this dull city
with its gloomy walls and its heavy air. A voice within me seems to
say, 'Behold from this very window the boundaries of your living
wanderings!'"

Isora's words froze all my previous exaltation. "It is in vain," said
I, after chiding her for her despondency, "it is in vain to tell me that
you have for this gloomy notion no other reason than that of a vague
presentiment. It is time now that I should press you to a greater
confidence upon all points consistent