sometimes on land, sometimes on sea, an adventurer, a speculator, a
gambler, and a wretch. Destiny chanced to throw him into the vortex of
corruption boiling in the heart of New York, when I went there, the
bride of Ernest. He had seen me in the street, before he met me at the
theatre; and, struck by my resemblance to the miniature which his
brother had given him, he inquired and learned my name and history, as
well as the wealth and rank of my husband. Confirmed in his suspicion
that I was the child of Rosalie, he resolved to fill his empty pockets
with my husband's gold, by making me believe that _he_ was my father,
and appealing to my filial compassion. Not satisfied with his success,
he forged the note, whose discovery was followed by detection,
conviction, imprisonment, and despair.

The only avenue to his seared and hardened heart had been found by the
son of Theresa, coming to him like a messenger from heaven, in all his
purity, excellence, and filial piety, not to avenge a mother's wrongs,
but to cheer and illumine a guilty father's doom. His brother, too,
seemed sent by Providence at this moment, that he might receive the
daughter whom, from motives of the basest selfishness, he had claimed as
his own.

When I first saw my father at the Falls, he had just returned to his
native land, in company with Julian, the young artist. Urged by one of
those irresistible impulses which may be the pressure of an angel's
hand, his spirit turned to the soil where he now firmly believed the
ashes of his Rosalie reposed. He and Julian parted on their first
arrival, met again on the morning of our departure, and travelled
together through some of the glowing and luxuriant regions of the West.
After Julian left him to visit Grandison Place, he lingered amid scenes
where nature revelled in all its primeval grandeur and original
simplicity, sketching its boldest and most attractive features, till,
God-directed, he came to the city over which the memory of his brief
wedded life trembled like a misty star throbbing on the lonely heart of
night. Hearing that a St. James was in the dungeons of the Tombs, a
convicted forger, he at once knew that it must be his brother. There he
sought him, and learned from him that the child of Rosalie lived, though
Rosalie was a more.

As simple as sad, was the solution of my life's mystery.

Concealment was the fatal source of our sorrows. Even the noble Henry
St. James erred in concealing his twi