a. The breaking-up of her short hour of
happiness had been too sudden, too abrupt, and too cruelly brought
about for a fondly doting, although heroic, woman. There was an
evident malignity in the words and manner of the one-eyed messenger,
an appearance as if he knew more than others, which awed and confused
both Philip and herself. Amine wept not, but she covered her face with
her hands as Philip, with no steady pace, walked up and down the small
room. Again, with all the vividness of colouring, did the scenes
half forgotten recur to his memory. Again did he penetrate the fatal
chamber--again was it obscure. The embroidery lay at his feet, and
once more he started as when the letter appeared upon the floor.

They had both awakened from a dream of present bliss, and shuddered at
the awful future which presented itself. A few minutes were sufficient
for Philip to resume his natural self-possession. He sat down by the
side of his Amine, and clasped her in his arms. They remained silent.
They knew too well each other's thoughts; and, excruciating as was
the effort, they were both summoning up their courage to bear, and
steeling their hearts against the conviction that, in this world, they
must now expect to be for a time, perhaps for ever, separated.

Amine was the first to speak: removing her arms, which had been wound
round her husband, she first put his hand to her heart, as if to
compress its painful throbbings, and then observed--

"Surely that was no earthly messenger, Philip! Did you not feel
chilled to death when he sat by you? I did, as he came in."

Philip, who had the same thought as Amine, but did not wish to alarm
her, answered confusedly--

"Nay, Amine, you fancy--that is, the suddenness of his appearance and
his strange conduct have made you imagine this; but I saw in him but a
man who, from his peculiar deformity, has become an envious outcast
of society--debarred from domestic happiness, from the smiles of the
other sex; for what woman could smile upon such a creature? His
bile raised at so much beauty in the arms of another, he enjoyed a
malignant pleasure in giving a message which he felt would break upon
those pleasures from which he is cut off. Be assured, my love, that it
was nothing more."

"And even if my conjecture were correct, what does it matter?" replied
Amine. "There can be nothing more--nothing which can render your
position more awful and more desperate. As your wife, Philip, I feel
l