nvolved her in a soft cloud of
pensiveness. She was unthroned, and like an uncrowned queen she sighed
over the remembrance of her former royalty. It was not strange that the
devotion of Julian, the enthusiasm of his character, the fervor of his
language, the ardor, the grace of his manner, should have captivated her
imagination and touched her heart. I never saw any one so changed in so
short a time. The contrast was almost as great, to her former self, as
between a placid silver lake, and the foam of the torrent sparkling and
flashing with rainbows. Her countenance had lost its air of divine
repose, and varied with every emotion of her soul. She was a thousand
times more beautiful, and I loved her far more than I had ever done
before. There was something unnatural in her exclusive, jealous love of
her brother, but now she acknowledged the supremacy of the great law of
woman's destiny. Like a flower, suddenly shaken by a southern gale, and
giving out the most delicious perfumes unknown before, her heart
fluttered and expanded and yielded both its hidden sweetnesses.

"We must not encourage him," said Mrs. Linwood to her son. "We do not
know who he is; we do not know his family or his lineage; we must
withdraw Edith from the influence of his fascinations."

I did not blame her, but I felt the sting to my heart's core. She saw
the wound she had unconsciously made, and hastened to apply a balm.

"The husband either exalts, or lowers, a wife to the position he
occupies," said she, looking kindly at me. "She loses her own identity
in his. Poverty would present no obstacle, for she has wealth sufficient
to be disinterested,--but my daughter must take a stainless name, if she
relinquish her own. But why do I speak thus? My poor, crippled child!
She has disowned the thought of marriage. She has chosen voluntarily an
unwedded lot. She does not, cannot, will not think with any peculiar
interest of this young stranger. No, no,--my Edith is set apart by her
misfortunes, as some enshrined and holy being, whom man must vainly
love."

I had never seen Mrs. Linwood so much agitated. Her eyes glistened, her
voice faltered with emotion. Ernest, too, seemed greatly troubled. They
had both been accustomed to look upon Edith as consecrated to a vestal
life; and as she had hitherto turned coldly and decidedly from the
addresses of men, they believed her inaccessible to the vows of love and
the bonds of wedlock. The young Julian was a poet