tter, so quick and loud my
heart beat against it.

"We are neither of us fit for the fashionable world, my Gabriella," said
he; "we have hearts and souls fitted for a purer, holier atmosphere than
the one we now breathe. If we had some 'bright little isle of our own,'
where we were safe from jarring contact with ruder natures, remote from
the social disturbances which interrupt the harmony of life, where we
could live for love and God, then, my Gabriella, I would not envy the
angels around the throne. No scene like this to-night would ever mar the
heaven of our wedded bliss."

Ernest did not know himself. Even in Crusoe's desert isle, if the print
of human footsteps were discovered on the sand, and had he flown to the
uttermost parts of the earth, the phantom created by his own diseased
imagination would have pursued him like the giant form that haunted from
pole to pole the unhappy Frankenstein. Man cannot escape from his own
passions; and in solitude their waves beat against his bosom, like the
eternal dashing of the tide, scarcely perceived amidst the active sounds
of day, but roaring and thundering in the deep stillness of the midnight
hour.

"We were happy here before Margaret came," I answered; "happy as it was
possible for mortals to be. How strange that she should have come
unasked, remain unurged, without dreaming of the possibility of her
being otherwise than a welcome guest!"

"There should be laws to prevent households from such intrusions," said
Ernest, with warmth. "I consider such persons as great offenders against
the peace of society as the midnight robber or the lurking assassin.
Margaret Melville cares for nothing but her own gratification. A
contemptible love of fun and frolic is the ruling passion of her life.
How false, how artificial is that system where there is no redress for
encroachments of this kind! Were I to act honestly and as I ought, I
should say to her at once, 'leave us,--your presence is
intolerable,--there is no more affinity between us than between glass
and brass.' But what would my mother say? What would the world say? What
would you say, my own dear wife, who desire her departure even as I do
myself?"

"I should be very much shocked, of course. If she had the least
sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling, she would read all this in your
countenance and manners. I often fear she will perceive in mine, the
repulsion I cannot help experiencing. For your mother's sake I wish to
b