's burning edge. The lava of passion might sweep over them quick
as the lightning's flash, and beauty and bloom be covered with ashes and
desolation.

And so the cloud passed by,--and Ernest was, if possible, more tender
and devoted, and I tried to cast off the prophetic sadness that would at
times steal over the brightness of the future. I was literally giving up
all for him. I no longer derived pleasure from the society of Mr.
Regulus. I dreaded the sportive sallies of Dr. Harlowe. I looked forward
with terror to the return of Richard Clyde. I grew nervous and restless.
The color would come and go in my face, like the flashes of the aurora
borealis, and my heart would palpitate suddenly and painfully, as if
some unknown evil were impending. Did I now say, as I did a few months
after my marriage, that I preferred the stormy elements in which I
moved, to the usual calm of domestic life? Did I exult, as the billows
swelled beneath me and bore me up on their foaming crests, in the power
of raising the whirlwind and the tempest? No; I sighed for rest,--for
still waters and tranquil skies.

It is strange, that a subject which has entirely escaped the mind, when
associations naturally recall it, will sometimes return and haunt it,
when nothing seems favorable for its reception.

During my agitated interview with my unhappy father, I had forgotten
Theresa La Fontaine, and the boy whose birthright I had unconsciously
usurped. Mr. Brahan, in speaking of St. James and his _two_ wives, said
they had both disappeared in a mysterious manner. That boy, if living,
was my brother, my half-brother, the legitimate inheritor of my name,--a
name, alas! he might well blush to bear. _If living_, where was he, and
who was he? Was he the heir of his father's vices, and was he conscious
of his ignominious career? These questions constantly recurred, now
there was no oracle near to answer. Once, and only once, I mentioned
them to Mrs. Linwood.

"You had better not attempt to lift the veil which covers the past," she
answered, in her most decided manner. "Think of the suffering, not to
say disgrace, attached to the discovery of your father,--and let this
brother be to you as though he had never been. Tempt not Providence, by
indulging one wish on the subject, which might lead to shame and sorrow.
Ernest has acted magnanimously with regard to the circumstances, which
must have been galling beyond expression to one of his proud and
sensitive n