ce I left your
city?"

"The rumor of the distressing circumstances which attended the discovery
of your brother reached us even here, and our hearts bled for you. But
all will yet be well. The terrible shock you have sustained will be a
death blow to the passion that has caused you so much misery. Forgive
me, if I make painful allusions; but I cannot suffer you to sink into
the gloom of despondency."

"I try to look upward. I do think the hopes which have no home on earth,
have found rest in heaven."

"But why, my dear young friend, do you close your heart to earthly hope?
Surely, when your husband returns, you may anticipate a joyful reunion."

"When he returns! Alas! his will be a life-long exile. Believing what he
does, he will never, never return."

"But you have written and explained every thing?"

"How can I write,--when I know not where to direct, when I know not to
what region he has wandered, or what resting-place he has found?"

"But Mr. Harland!" said she, with a look of troubled surprise. "You
might learn through him?"

"Mrs. Linwood has written repeatedly to Mr. Harland, and received no
answer. She concluded that he had left the city, but knew not how to
ascertain his address."

"Then you did not know that he had gone to India? I thought,--I
believed,--is it possible that you are not aware"--

"Of what?" I exclaimed, catching hold of her arm, for my brain reeled
and my sight darkened.

"That Mr. Linwood accompanied him," she answered, turning pale at the
agitation her words excited. To India! that distant, deadly clime! To
India, without one farewell, one parting token to her whom he left
apparently on the brink of the grave!

By the unutterable anguish of that moment, I knew the delusion that had
veiled my motives. I had thought it was only to reclaim a lost parent
that I had come, but I found it was the hope of meeting the deluded
wanderer, more than filial piety, that had urged my departure.

"To India!" I cried, and my spirit felt the tossings of the wild billows
that lay rolling between. "Then we are indeed parted,--parted for ever!"

"Why, t'is but a step from ocean to ocean, from clime to clime," she
said in kind, assuring accents. "Men think nothing of such a voyage, for
science has furnished wings which bear them over space with the speed of
an eagle. If you knew not his destination, I should think you would
rejoice rather than mourn, to be relieved of the torture of suspense.
Had