ge as it may
seem, all that I have suffered of humiliation and anguish in this _real_
trial, cannot be compared to the agony caused by one of my own dark
imaginings."

I tried to obey the injunctions of Ernest; but though my lips were
silent, it was impossible to check the current of thought, or to
obliterate the dark remembrance of the past. My spirits lost their
elasticity, the roses on my cheek grew pale.

Spring came, not as in the country, with the rich garniture of living
green, clothing hill, valley, and lawn,--the blossoming of flowers,--the
warbling of birds,--the music of waters,--and all the beauty, life, and
glory of awakening nature. But the fountain played once more in the
grotto, the vine-wreaths frolicked again round their graceful shells,
the statues looked at their pure faces in the shining mural wall.

I cared not for these. This was not my home. I saw the faces of Mrs.
Linwood and Edith in the mirror of memory. I saw the purple hills, the
smiling vale, the quiet churchyard, the white, broken shaft, gleaming
through the willow boughs, and the moonbeams resting in solemn glory
there.

Never shall I forget my emotions when, on quitting the city, I caught a
glimpse of that gloomy and stupendous granite pile which looms up in the
midst of grandeur and magnificence, an awful monitor to human depravity.
Well does it become its chill, funereal name. Shadows deeper than the
darkness of the grave hang within its huge Egyptian columns. Corruption
more loathsome than the mouldering remains of mortality dwells in those
lone and accursed cells. I gazed on the massy walls, as they frowned on
the soft blue sky, till their shadow seemed to darken the heavens. I
thought of the inmate of one lonely cell; of the sighs and tears, the
curses and wailings that had gone up from that abode of shame, despair,
and misery; and I wondered why the Almighty did not rend the heavens and
come down and bare the red right arm of vengeance over a world so
blackened by sin, so stained by crime, and so given up to the dominion
of the spirit of evil.

Ernest drew me back from the window of the carriage, that I might not
behold this grim fortification against the powers of darkness; but it
was not till we had quitted the walls of the metropolis, and inhaled a
purer atmosphere, that I began to breathe more freely. The tender green
of the fields, the freshness of the atmosphere, the indescribable odor
of spring that embalmed the gale,