mpanions summoned, and said to them; "I deserved to
die, but a generous trust has called me back to life. I will be worthy
of it, nor ever betray the truth, or resent injury more. Can you forgive
the past?"

And they not only forgave, but, with love and earnest tears, clasped in
their arms the returning sister. They vied with one another in offices
of humble love to the humbled one; and, let it be recorded as an
instance of the pure honor of which young hearts are capable, that these
facts, known to forty persons, never, so far as I know, transpired
beyond those walls.

It was not long after this that Mariana was summoned home. She went
thither a wonderfully instructed being, though in ways those who had
sent her forth to learn little dreamed of.

Never was forgotten the vow of the returning prodigal. Mariana could not
resent, could not play false. The terrible crisis, which she so early
passed through, probably prevented the world from hearing much of her. A
wild fire was tamed in that hour of penitence at the boarding school,
such as has oftentimes wrapped court and camp in its destructive glow.

But great were the perils she had yet to undergo, for she was one of
those barks which easily get beyond soundings, and ride not lightly on
the plunging billow.

Her return to her native climate seconded the effects of inward
revolutions. The cool airs of the north had exasperated nerves too
susceptible for their tension. Those of the south restored her to a more
soft and indolent state. Energy gave place to feeling, turbulence to
intensity of character.

At this time love was the natural guest, and he came to her under a form
that might have deluded one less ready for delusion.

Sylvain was a person well proportioned to her lot in years, family, and
fortune. His personal beauty was not great, but of a noble character.
Repose marked his slow gesture, and the steady gaze of his large brown
eye, but it was a repose that would give way to a blaze of energy when
the occasion called. In his stature, expression, and heavy coloring, he
might not unfitly be represented by the great magnolias that inhabit the
forests of that climate. His voice, like everything about him, was rich
and soft, rather than sweet or delicate.

Mariana no sooner knew him than she loved, and her love, lovely as she
was, soon excited his. But, oh! it is a curse to woman to love first, or
most. In so doing she reverses the natural relations, and her he