to the spot where I knelt. My heart almost ceased beating; when he
suddenly knelt at my side, and put his arms around me.

"Gabriella!" said he, "if I have done you wrong, may God forgive me; but
I never can forgive myself."

Accents of love issuing from the grave could hardly have been more
thrilling or unexpected. I turned, and leaning my head on his shoulder,
I felt myself drawn closer and closer to the heart from which I believed
myself for ever estranged. I entreated his forgiveness for having
deceived him. I told him, for I believed it then, that the purity of the
motive did not justify the act; and I promised in the most solemn manner
never again, under any circumstances, to bind myself to do any thing
unknown to him, or even to act spontaneously without his knowledge. In
the rapture of reconciliation, I was willing to give any pledge as a
security for love, without realizing that jealousy was a Shylock,
exacting the fulfilment of the bond,--the pound of flesh "nearest the
heart." Yes, more exacting still, for _he_ paused, when forbidden to
spill the red life-drops, and dropped the murderous knife.

And Ernest,--with what deep self-abasement he acknowledged the errors
into which blind passion had led him. With what anguish he reflected on
the disgraceful charge he had brought against me. Yes; even with tears,
he owned his injustice and madness, and begged me to forget and forgive.

"What have I done?" he cried, when, after our passionate emotions having
subsided, we sat hand in hand, still pale and trembling, but subdued and
grateful, like two mariners escaped from wreck, watching the billows
roaring back from the shore. "What have I done, that this curse should
be entailed upon me? In these paroxysms of madness, I am no more master
of myself than the maniac who hurls his desperate hand in the face of
Omnipotence. Reason has no power,--love no influence. Dark clouds rush
across my mind, shutting out the light of truth. My heart freezes, as in
a wintry storm. O, Gabriella! you can have no conception of what I
suffer, while I writhe in the tempter's grasp. It is said God never
allows man to be tempted beyond his powers of resistance. I dare not
question the word of the Most High, but in the hour of temptation I feel
like an infant contending with the Philistine giant. But, oh! the joy,
the rapture when the paroxysm is past,--when light dawns on the
darkness, when warmth comes meltingly over the ice and snow, when