e not?"

"I do not expect happiness," she answered, with a sigh; "but Julian's
love will gild the gloom of sorrow, and be the rainbow of my clouded
days. He will return in the winter, and then perhaps he will not leave
me again. I cannot quit my mother; but he can take a son's place in her
desolated home. No garlands of roses will twine round my bridal hours,
for they are all withered, all but the rose of Sharon, Gabriella, whose
sacred bloom can never fade away. It is the only flower worth
cherishing,--the only one without thorns, and without blight."

Softly withdrawing her supporting arms, she suffered me to sink back on
the pillow, gave me a reviving cordial, drew the curtains, and taking up
a book, seemed absorbed in its contents. I closed my eyes and appeared
to sleep, that she might not suppose her narration had banished repose.
I had anticipated all she uttered; but the certainty of desolation is
different to the agonies of suspense. I could have borne the separation
from Ernest; but that he should believe me the false, guilty wretch I
had seemed to be, inflicted pangs sharper than the vulture's beak or the
arrow's barb. If he had left the country, as there was every reason to
suppose he had, with this conviction, he never would return; and the
loneliness and dreariness of a widowhood more sad than that which death
creates, would settle down darkly and heavily on my young life.

I did not blame him for the rash deed he had wrought, for it was a
madman's act. When I recalled the circumstances, I did not wonder at the
frantic passion that dyed his hand in blood; and yet I could not blame
myself. Had I shrunk from a brother's embrace, I should have been either
more or less than woman. I had yielded to a divine impulse, and could
appeal to nature and Heaven for justification.

But I had sinned. I had broken the canons of the living God, and
deserved a fearful chastisement. I had made unto myself an idol, and no
pagan idolater ever worshipped at his unhallowed shrine with more blind
devotion. I had been true to Ernest, but false to my Maker, the one
great and _jealous_ God. I had lived but for one object, and that object
was withdrawn, leaving all creation a blank.

I stood upon the lonely strand, the cold waves beating against my feet,
and the bleak winds piercing through my unsheltered heart. I stretched
out my arms to the wild waste of waters, in whose billows my life-boat
was whelmed, and I called, but there