t of the daughter. She was still in the little
breakfast-parlor--that parlor so loved! I found her pale, timid,
sensitive, bland, but serene. Little could ever disturb that heavenly
quality in the dear girl; if she laughed, it was with a restrained and
moderated joy; if she wept, it was like rain falling from a sky that
still shone with the lustre of the sun. It was only when feeling and
nature were unutterably big within her, that some irresistible impulse
of her sex betrayed her into emotions like those I had twice witnessed
so lately.

"You are about to leave us, Jack," she said, holding out her hand kindly
and without the affectation of an indifference she did not feel; "you
will see many strange faces, but you will see none who--"

I waited for the completion of the sentence, but, although she struggled
hard for self-possession, it was never finished.

"At my age, Anna, and with my means, it would be unbecoming to remain
at home, when, if I may so express it, 'human nature is abroad.' I go
to quicken my sympathies, to open my heart to my kind, and to avoid the
cruel regrets that tortured the death-bed of my father."

"Well--well," interrupted the sobbing girl, "we will talk of it no more.
It is best that you should travel; and so adieu, with a thousand--nay,
millions of good wishes for your happiness and safe return. You will
come back to us, Jack, when tired of other scenes."

This was said with gentle earnestness and a sincerity so winning that it
came near upsetting all my philosophy; but I could not marry the whole
sex, and to bind down my affections in one would have been giving the
death-blow to the development of that sublime principle on which I
was bent, and which I had already decided was to make me worthy of my
fortune and the ornament of my species. Had I been offered a kingdom,
however, I could not speak. I took the unresisting girl in my arms,
folded her to my heart, pressed a burning kiss on her cheek, and
withdrew.

"You will come back to us, Jack?" she half whispered, as her hand was
reluctantly drawn through my own.

Oh! Anna, it was indeed painful to abandon thy frank and gentle
confidence, thy radiant beauty, thy serene affections, and all thy
womanly virtues, in order to practise my newly-discovered theory! Long
did thy presence haunt me--nay, never did it entirely desert me--putting
my constancy to a severe proof, and threatening at each remove to
contract the lengthening chain that st