steadfast and decisive ever to be changed, and at the same time too
full and unreserved to maintain the materials for a second passion.
The impression she received was too deep ever to be erased. She might
weep--she might mourn--she might sink--her soul might be bowed down to
the dust--her heart might break--she might die--but she never, never,
could love again. That heart was his palace, where the monarch of her
affections reigned--but remove his throne, and it became the sepulchre
of her own hopes--the ruin, haunted by the moping brood of her own
sorrows. Often, indeed, did her family wonder at the freshness of memory
manifested in the character of her love for Osborne. There was nothing
transient, nothing forgotten, nothing perishable in her devotion to him.
In truth, it had something of divinity in it. Every thing past, and much
also of the future was present to her. Osborne breathed and lived at the
expiration of two years, just as he had done the day before he set out
on his travels. In her heart he existed as an undying principle, and the
duration of her love for him seemed likely to be limited only by those
laws of nature, which, in the course of time, carry the heart beyond the
memory of all human affections.

It would, indeed, be almost impossible to see a creature so lovely and
angelic as was our heroine, about the period when Osborne was expected
to return. Retaining all the graceful elasticity of motion that
characterized her when first introduced to our readers, she was now
taller and more majestic in her person, rounder and with more symmetry
in her figure, and also more conspicuous for the singular ease and
harmony of her general deportment. Her hair, too, now grown to greater
luxuriance, had become several shades deeper, and, of course, was much
more rich than when Charles saw it last. But if there was any thing
that, more than another, gave an expression of tenderness to her beauty,
it was the under-tone of color--the slightly perceptible paleness which
marked her complexion as that of a person whose heart though young had
already been made acquainted with some early sorrow.

Had her lover then seen her, and witnessed the growth of charms that
had taken place during his absence, he and she might both, alas, have
experienced another and a kinder destiny.

The time at length arrived when Charles, as had been settled upon by
both their parents, was expected to return. During the three months
previous