of flowers, and he breathed
an atmosphere pure as the world's first spring. He was _young_, though
past the meridian of life. There was but one mark of age upon his
interesting and noble person, and that was the snowy shade that softened
his raven hair,--foam of the waves of time, showing they had been lashed
by the storms, or driven against breakers and reefs of destiny.

The first time I took him into the library, he stopped before the
picture of Ernest. I did not tell him whose it was. He gazed upon it
long and earnestly.

"What a countenance!" he exclaimed. "I can see the lights and shades of
feeling flashing and darkening over it. It has the troubled splendor of
a tropic night, when clouds and moonbeams are struggling. Is it a
portrait, or an ideal picture?"

"It is Ernest,--it is my husband," I answered; and it seemed to me as if
all the ocean surges that rolled between us were pressing their cold
weight on my heart.

"My poor girl! my beloved Gabriella! All your history is written there."

I threw myself in his arms, and wept. Had I seen Ernest dead at my feet,
I could not have felt more bitter grief. I had never indulged it so
unrestrainedly before in his presence, for I had always thought more of
him than myself; and in trying to cheer him, I had found cheerfulness.
Now I remembered only Ernest's idolatrous love, and his sorrows and
sufferings, forgetting my own wrongs; and I felt there would always be
an aching void which even a father's and brother's tenderness (for
brother I still called Richard) could never fill.

"Oh, my father," I cried, "bear with my weakness,--bear with me a little
while. There is comfort in weeping on a father's bosom, even for a loss
like mine. I shall never see him again. He is dead, or if living, is
dead to me. You cannot blame me, father. You see there a faint semblance
of what he is,--splendid, fascinating, and haunting, though at times so
dark and fearful. No words of mine can give an idea of the depth, the
strength, the madness of his love. It has been the blessing and the
bane, the joy and the terror, the angel and the demon of my life. I know
it was sinful in its wild excess, and mine was sinful, too, in its blind
idolatry, and I know the blessing of God could not hallow such a union.
But how can I help feeling the dearth, the coldness, the weariness
following such passionate emotions? How can I help feeling at times,
that the sun of my existence is set, and a long, dark