r can ever arrive when the former
votaries of a mutual passion so exquisite and engrossing can meet each
other with indifference, almost with unconsciousness, and recall with
an effort their vanished scenes of felicity, that quick yet profound
sympathy, that ready yet boundless confidence, all that charming
abandonment of self, and that vigilant and prescient fondness that
anticipates all our wants and all our wishes? It makes the heart ache
but to picture such vicissitudes to the imagination. They are images
full of distress, and misery, and gloom. The knowledge that such changes
can occur flits over the mind like the thought of death, obscuring
all our gay fancies with its bat-like wing, and tainting the healthy
atmosphere of our happiness with its venomous expirations. It is not so
much ruined cities that were once the capital glories of the world, or
mouldering temples breathing with oracles no more believed, or arches
of triumph which have forgotten the heroic name they were piled up to
celebrate, that fill the mind with half so mournful an expression of
the instability of human fortunes, as these sad spectacles of exhausted
affections, and, as it were, traditionary fragments of expired passion.

The morning, which broke sweet, and soft, and clear, brought Ferdinand,
with its first glimmer, a letter from Henrietta.

_Henrietta to Ferdinand._

Mine own! I have not lain down the whole night. What a terrible, what
an awful night! To think that he was in the heart of that fearful storm!
What did, what could you do? How I longed to be with you! And I could
only watch the tempest from my window, and strain my eyes at every flash
of lightning, in the vain hope that it might reveal him! Is he well, is
he unhurt? Until my messenger return I can imagine only evil. How often
I was on the point of sending out the household, and yet I thought it
must be useless, and might displease him! I knew not what to do. I beat
about my chamber like a silly bird in a cage. Tell me the truth, my
Ferdinand; conceal nothing. Do not think of moving to-day. If you feel
the least unwell, send immediately for advice. Write to me one line,
only one line, to tell me you are well. I shall be in despair until I
hear from you. Do not keep the messenger an instant. He is on my pony.
He promises to return in a very, very short time. I pray for you, as I
prayed for you the whole long night, that seemed as if it would never
end. God bless you, my