but I knew not what to say. What could I write of but sorrow and gratitude; prayers for your prosperity, and entreaties that you will sometimes think of me? All these things are common in words, and, look, I have said them in a manner less liable to doubt."

He looked mechanically at the paper. It was stained with tears. "Good God," he exclaimed, "you have not resolved?"

"I am doomed to be wretched, and, perhaps, I shall be less so as a wife, though to a man whom it were folly to suppose I could ever love."

He gasped for breath. Every nerve was in a tremour, and he scarce knew how to give utterance to the thoughts which were boiling in his bosom. Her marriage in any case had been death to him, but such a marriage! He spoke with all the vehemence of despair, depicted the horrors she was prepared to encounter, piled argument on argument, and when he could no farther assail her reason, appealed to her sensibility, beseeching her, for his sake, to have mercy on herself.

"Oh, Mary!” he cried, "when I have listened

to your voice-to your gentle counsels-and learnt to grow better, and tried to grow happier -when I have gazed upon you, and thought you some ideal creation of an overcharged fancy, too beautiful, too good to be real, could I guess that all these glorious faculties were to be cast to a vile earth-worm, incapable of distinguishing them from the filth that was meant for him? Had I thought it, I should have flown in time, fancied it all a dream, and borne no miseries but my own."

He took her hand, and drew her closer to him.

"Do not," she said, "do not tell me that I have added to your misery!" She looked piteously in his face, and then bent down her head, and her tears fell upon his shoulder. He was completely off his guard. The sensation, almost approaching to awe, with which her true dignity of heart had inspired him, and which he never could throw off, even in their most familiar moments, was, for the time, lost in more violent emotions. For the first time in his life he pressed his lips to her's, and she suffered him to clasp her to his heart with the confidence

of a loving and beloved sister. "Do not," she repeated, "do not tell me that I have added to your misery!"

Alas for Arnaut! his feelings hurried him on he knew not whither. He not only deprecated her marriage, but betrayed the secret of his own wretched passion, confessed the whole history of his agony from first to last; and, in short, as he told me himself, behaved like a maniac. Mary at first listened as though she did not understand him; as he proceeded her tears stopped; she grew pale and trembled violently; and, at the conclusion, flung herself from his arms, and rushed into her bed-room, which was adjoining, with a scream of anguish, which restored his senses like an electric shock, and was never afterwards out of his ears. He approached the chamber door. A tremulous and indistinct murmur was all he could hear. His terrors as to what might be the consequence of his conduct and his altogether agonized state had given him courage to brave any thing. He knocked, but there was no reply, and he opened the door. Mary was lying on the bed; her face hid in the

pillow, and her arms spread out in the distracted attitude in which she had cast herself down. Her whole frame was shuddering, and when he flung himself upon his knees beside her, she seemed totally unconscious of his intrusion. It was long before he ventured to speak, and not till then did he discover that she was still sensible. "Leave me," she said in a faint but piercing accent. Arnaut was immoveable; and she repeated, in a stifled shriek, "For God's sake, leave me!" To have disobeyed might have been death to her. He rang the bell for her maid-servant, and dashed out of the house like an evil spirit.

When he returned home his cheeks were bloodless, and his whole demeanour wild and extravagant. I besought him for the cause, and he groaned out the foregoing history. My knowledge of Mary's character was quite sufficient to assure me that his offence was such as to place an insuperable bar to their ever being upon their former footing. But I used my best endeavours to calm him. Her great affection would make every possible allowance. Her gentle temper could not choose but for

give; and I volunteered to be the mediator. He tried to appear pacified, thanked me fervently, and gave me a thousand confused, unintelligible, and passionate instructions as to what I was to say, and how I was to conduct myself.

It so happened, that the friends with whom Mary was staying were engaged out to a party that evening, and I took it for granted that, after what had occurred, she would excuse herself from accompanying them. I was right. When I thought they had set off, I rang at the gate, and was told that Miss --was not well. I, however, persisted in sending up my name, and the answer was, that she would be happy to see me. She was sitting on a sofa, very pale and very mournful, but, at the same time, very calm and collected. She anticipated the object of my visit, and told me that if I had not come, she had purposed sending for me. As an advocate for my friend, she said, I had no necessity to speak. He was freely forgiven, and it was chiefly her own conduct that pierced her to the heart, for she was sensible that, had it not been open to misconception, he never had