o hand but his had touched, thrilled at the sound. "If the spot on
which we stand were a desert island, and the valley stretching around us
the wide waste of ocean, and we the only beings in the solitude of
nature, with your hand thus clasped in mine, and my heart thus throbbing
near, with a love so strong, so deep, it would be to you in place of the
whole world beside,--tell me, could you be happy?"

"I could," was the low, irresistible answer; and my soul, like an
illuminated temple, flashed with inward light. I covered my eyes to keep
in the dazzling rays. I forgot the sad history of wrongs and disgrace
which I had just been perusing;--I forgot that such words had breathed
into my mother's ear, and that she believed them. I only remembered that
Ernest Linwood loved me, and _that_ love surrounded me with a luminous
atmosphere, in which joy and hope fluttered their heavenly wings.

How slight a thing will change the current of thought! I caught a
glimpse of the granite walls of Grandison Place, and darkened by the
shades, they seemed to frown upon me with their high turret and lofty
colonnade, so ancestral and imposing. Then I remembered Mrs. Linwood and
Edith,--then I remembered my mother, my _father_, and all the light went
out in my heart.

"I had forgotten,--oh, how much I had forgotten," I cried, endeavoring
to release myself from the arm that only tightened its hold. "Your
mother never would forgive my presumption if she thought,--if she knew."

"My mother loves you; but even if she did not, I am free to act, free to
choose, as every man should be. I love and _revere_ my mother, but there
is a passion stronger than filial love and reverence, which goes on
conquering and to conquer. She will not, she cannot oppose me."

"But Edith, dear Edith, who loves you so devotedly! She will hate me if
I dare to supplant her."

"A sister never can be supplanted,--and least of all such a sister as
Edith, Gabriella. If you do not feel that love so expands, so enlarges
the heart, that it makes room for all the angels in heaven, you could
not share my island home."

"If you knew all,--if I could tell you all," I cried,--and again I felt
the barbed anguish that prostrated me at the grave,--"and you _shall_
know,--your generous love demands this confidence. When your mother has
read the history of my parentage, I will place it in your hands; though
my mother's character is as exalted and spotless as your own, there is a
clou