I can taste one of the
possessions which fortune has heaped upon me, that I have one healthful
faculty, one sense of enjoyment, among the hundred which other men are
'heirs to?' When did you ever see me for a moment happy? I live, as it
were, on a rock, barren, and herbless, and sapless, and cut off from
all human fellowship and intercourse. I had only a single object left to
live for, when you saw me at Paris; I have gratified that, and the end
and purpose of my existence is fulfilled. Heaven is merciful; but a
little while, and this feverish and unquiet spirit shall be at rest."

I took his hand and pressed it.

"Feel," said he, "this dry, burning skin; count my pulse through the
variations of a single minute, and you will cease either to pity me,
or to speak to me of life. For months I have had, night and day, a
wasting--wasting fever, of brain, and heart, and frame; the fire works
well, and the fuel is nearly consumed."

He paused, and we were both silent. In fact, I was shocked at the fever
of his pulse, no less than affected at the despondency of his words. At
last I spoke to him of medical advice.

"'Canst thou,'" he said, with a deep solemnity of voice and manner,
"'administer to a mind diseased--pluck from the memory'--Ah! away with
the quotation and the reflection." And he sprung from the sofa, and
going to the window, opened it, and leaned out for a few moments in
silence. When he turned again towards me, his manner had regained its
usual quiet. He spoke about the important motion approaching on the--,
and promised to attend; and then, by degrees, I led him to talk of his
sister.

He mentioned her with enthusiasm. "Beautiful as Ellen is," he said, "her
face is the very faintest reflection of her mind. Her habits of thought
are so pure, that every impulse is a virtue. Never was there a person
to whom goodness was so easy. Vice seems something so opposite to her
nature, that I cannot imagine it possible for her to sin."

"Will you not call with me at your mother's?" said I. "I am going there
to-day."

Glanville replied in the affirmative, and we went at once to Lady
Glanville's, in Berkeley-square. We were admitted into his mother's
boudoir. She was alone with Miss Glanville. Our conversation soon
turned from common-place topics to those of a graver nature; the deep
melancholy of Glanville's mind imbued all his thoughts when he once
suffered himself to express them.

"Why," said Lady Glanville, who s