t length
led to that forbidden topic. "I am afraid, Mr Marston," said he, "that
I have been too harsh with my child. I looked for her alliance with
some of the opulent among my own kindred; or I should have rejoiced if
your regards had been fixed on her, and hers on you. And in those
dreams, I forgot that the affections must choose for themselves. I had
no objection to the young Frenchman, but that he was a stranger, and
was poor.--Yet are not we ourselves strangers? and if he was poor, was
not I rich? But all is over now; and I shall only have to follow my
poor Mariamne, where I should have much rather preceded her,--to the
grave."

I now requested to see Mariamne. She met me with almost a cry of joy,
and with a cheek of sudden crimson; but, when the first flush passed
away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and
sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once
dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once
remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was
buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her
eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed--it was softer
and less capricious; her language, even her voice, was subdued; and
more than once I saw a tear stealing on her eye. At length, after
hearing some slight detail of her wanderings, and her fears that the
troubles of Spain might drive her from a country in whose genial
climate and flowery fields "she had hoped to end her days;" I
incidentally asked--whether, in all her wanderings, she had heard of
"my friend, Lafontaine." How impossible is it to deceive the instinct
of the female heart! The look which she gave me, the searching glance
of her fine eyes, which flashed with all their former lustre, and the
sudden quivering of her lip, told me how deeply his image was fixed in
her recollection. She saw at once that I had tidings of her lover; and
she hung upon the hand which I held out to her, with breathless and
beseeching anxiety. After some precautions, I revealed to her the
facts--that he was as faithfully devoted to her as ever, and--that he
was even under her roof!

I leave the rest of her story to be conjectured. I shall only say,
that I saw her made happy; the burden taken off her spirits which had
exhausted her frame; her former vivacity restored, her eye sparkling
once more; and even the heart of her father cheered, and acknowledging
"that there was