their union was annulled by law, and that she had a
right to marry another, and that she did so that I might have a father
and protector. She explained this simply, so that I understood it all,
and I understood too why she wished me to drop my own name and take that
of her future husband. It was associated with so much sorrow and wrong,
it was painful to her ear, and Mr. Clyde wished me to adopt his own. He
was a good and honorable man, and I cherish his memory with reverence
and gratitude. If the fissure in my mother's heart was not healed, it
closed, and tears no longer dripped through.

"Our country home was pleasant and comfortable, and I revelled in the
delights of nature, with all the wild passion of a bird let loose from
the imprisoning cage. I went to school,--I was in the world of
action,--the energies of incipient manhood awoke and struggled in my
bosom. We remained about two years in this rural residence, situated in
the western part of New York, when Mr. Clyde was called to attend a
dying father, who lived in this town, Gabriella, not very far from the
little cottage in the woods where I first knew you. He took my mother
and myself with him, for she was in feeble health, and he thought the
journey would invigorate her. It did not. A child of sunny France, she
languished under the bleaker New England skies. She was never able to
return; and he who came to bury a father, soon laid a beloved wife by
the side of the aged. My heart went down to the grave with her, and it
was long before its resurrection. My step-father was completely crushed
by the blow, for he loved her as such a woman deserved to be loved, and
mourned as few mourn. He remained with his aged mother in the old
homestead, which she refused to leave, and I was placed in the academy
under the charge of Mr. Regulus, where I first knew and loved you, my
own sister, my darling, beloved Gabriella."

If I had loved Richard before, how much more did I love him now, after
hearing his simple and affecting history, so similar to my own. As I had
never loved him otherwise than as a brother, the revelation which had
caused such a terrible revulsion in his feelings was a sacred sanction
to mine. His nerves still vibrated from the shock, and he could not
pronounce the word sister without a tremulousness of voice which
betrayed internal agitation.

He had but little more to relate. His step-father was dead, and as there
was found to be a heavy mortgage on his