reason
resumes its sway, and love its empire,--oh! my beloved! it is life
renewed--it is a resurrection from the dead,--it is Paradise regained in
the heart."

Those who have floated along on a smooth, tranquil tide, clear of the
breakers and whirlpools and rocks, or whose bark has lain on stagnant
waters, on which a green and murky shade is beginning to gather, with no
breeze to fan them or to curl the dull and lifeless pool, will accuse me
of exaggeration, and say such scenes never occurred in the actual
experience of wedded life; that I am writing a romance, instead of a
reality.

I answer them, that I am drawing the sketch as faithfully as the artist,
who transfers the living form to the canvas; that as it is scarcely
possible to exaggerate the dying agonies of the malefactor transfixed by
the dagger, and writhing in protracted tortures, that the painter may
immortalize himself by the death-throes on which he is gazing; so the
agonies of him,

"Who doubts, yet does, suspects, yet fondly loves,"

cannot be described in colors too deep and strong. Prometheus bound to
the rock, with the beak of the vulture in his bleeding breast, suffering
daily renewing pangs, his wounds healed only to be torn open afresh, is
an emblem of the victim of that vulture passion, which the word of God
declares to be cruel and insatiable as the grave.

No; my pen is too weak to describe either the terrors of the storm or
the halcyon peace, the heavenly joy that succeeded. I yielded to the
exquisite bliss of reconciliation, without daring to give one glance to
the future. I had chosen my destiny. I had said, "Let me be loved,--I
ask no more!"

I was loved, even to the madness of idolatry. My prayer was granted.
Then let me "lay my hand upon my mouth, and my mouth in the dust." I had
rather be the stormy petrel, whose wings dip into ocean's foaming brine,
than the swallow nestling under the barn-eaves of the farmer, or in the
chimney of the country homestead,--

"Better to stand the lightning's shock,
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

It was fortunate for me that Margaret was absent during this exciting
scene. When she returned, she was too much occupied with relating the
pleasures she had enjoyed to think of what might have occurred in her
absence.

"I am dying with impatience," she cried, "perfectly consuming with
curiosity. Here is a letter from my mother, in which she says a
gentlem