th had such a sweet, coaxing way with her, she magnetized pain and
subdued self-distrust. The mere touch of her gentle hand had allayed the
fever of my brain, and one glance of her loving blue eye tempered the
anguish of my spirit. She lingered, unwilling to leave me,--drew the
blinds together, making a soft twilight amid the glare of day, saturated
my handkerchief with cologne and laid it on my temples, and placing a
beautiful bouquet of flowers, an offering to herself, on my pillow,
kissed me, and left me.

I watched the sound of her retreating footsteps, or rather of her
crutches, till they were no longer heard; then burying my face in my
pillow, the sultry anguish of my heart was drenched in tears. Oh! what a
relieving shower! It was the thunder-shower of the tropics, not the
slow, drizzling rain of colder climes. I wept till the pillow was as wet
as the turf on which the heavens have been weeping. I clasped it to my
bosom as a shield against invisible foes, but there was no _sympathy_ in
its downy softness. I sighed for a pillow beneath whose gentle heavings
the heart of human kindness beats, I yearned to lay my head on a
mother's breast. Yea, cold and breathless as it was now, beneath the
clods of the valley, it would still be a sacred resting-place to me. The
long pressure of the grave-sods could not crush out the impression of
that love, stronger than death, deeper than the grave.

Had the time arrived when I might claim the manuscript, left as a
hallowed legacy to the orphan, who had no other inheritance? Had I
awakened to the knowledge of woman's destiny to love and suffer? Dare I
ask myself this question? Through the morning twilight of my heart, was
not a star trembling, whose silver rays would never be quenched, save in
the nightshades of death? Was it not time to listen to the warning
voice, whose accents, echoing from the tomb, must have the power and
grandeur of prophecy? Yes! I would ask Mrs. Linwood for my mother's
history, as soon as we returned to Grandison Place; and if I found the
shadow of disgrace rested on the memory of her I so loved and
worshipped, I would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, to avoid
that searching eye, which, next to the glance of Omnipotence, I would
shun in guilt and shame.

"They say!" Who are _they_? who are the cowled monks, the hooded friars
who glide with shrouded faces in the procession of life, muttering in an
unknown tongue words of mysterious import? Who are