e, or hope to have on earth."

"But you must not," he replied, gravely yet tenderly, "because"----

"You love another," she interrupted him, very quickly, "You love Julia
Serena, Hortensia's lovely daughter; and she loves you, and you are to be
wedded soon. You see," she added, with a faint painful smile, "that I know
everything about you. I knew it long since; long, long before I gave
myself to you; even before I loved you, Paul--for I have loved you, also,
long!"

"Loved me long!" he exclaimed, in astonishment, "how can that be, when you
never saw me until the day before yesterday?"

"Oh! yes I have," she answered sadly. "I have seen you and known you many
years; though you have forgotten me, if even, which I doubt, you ever
noticed me at all. But I can bring it to your mind. Have you forgotten
how, six summers since, as you were riding down the Collis Hortulorum, you
passed a little girl weeping by the wayside?--"

"Over a wounded kid? No, I remember very well. A great country boor had
hurt it with a stone."

"And you," exclaimed the girl, with her eyes flashing fire, "you sprang
down from your horse, and chastised him, till he whined like a beaten
hound, though he was twice as big as you were; and then you bound up the
kid's wound, and wiped away the tears--innocent tears they were--of the
little girl, and parted her hair, and kissed her on the forehead. That
little girl was I, and I have kept that kiss upon my brow, aye, and in my
heart too! until now. No lips of man or woman have ever touched that spot
which your lips hallowed. From that day forth I have loved you, I have
adored you, Paullus. From that day forth I have watched all your ways,
unseen and unsuspected. I have seen you do fifty kind, and generous, and
gallant actions; but never saw you do one base, or tyrannous, or cowardly,
or cruel--"

"Until that fatal night!" he said, with a deep groan. "May the Gods pardon
me! I never shall forgive my self."

"No! no! I tell you, no!" cried the girl, impetuously. "I tell you, that I
was not deceived, if I fell; but I did not fall then! I knew that you
loved Julia, years ago. I knew that I never could be yours in honor; and
that put fire and madness in my brain, and despair in my heart. And my
home was a hell, and those who should have been my guides and saviours
were my destroyers; and I am--_what I am_; but in that you had no share. On
that night, I but obeyed the accursed bidding of the blackest and most