disgust for his vocation, ah! even diminished affection towards him? "What then would remain to him to do, but either live on in hopeless misery and self-reproach, or die, the only means whereby to set her free and restore her to the grade in life, from which he had withdrawn her? No, indeed it is well! Signorina, you have done wisely, kindly, and so my sore heart will try to feel. Adieu, be happy! and time then, perchance, may restore peace to the heart of— CARLO ANGELO." This then was the letter, which, whilst stooping together over the music in search of a duet, the writer had slipped into the hands of Aline, and which she, without any outward sign of discomfiture and surprise, had received and pressed into her bosom. But the real effect on her overstrained nervesthe excited feelings which this transaction had produced-may be divined from the sequel. And now she had drawn forth with trembling eagerness the hidden billet, and as often as her dizzy eyes would enable her to fix and comprehend the characters, had perused its contents. What would he say now, who had once poured into her ears such tender words-the true language of love compared with that cold egotism of her English lordly lover little worth the name? How eager was she to catch once more the re-awakened strain, that strain so long hushed, even if its language were changed from sweet flattery to bitter reproach. Any thing from him, from his heart! She read...... and her cheek burnt, her breast was pierced. No eloquence, no tender warmth, was there-cold-cold, measured, were those first lines. He cast back her love upon Lord Mervyn! But the irrepressible outburst of tenderness which followed, reassured her pride; the ardent struggle to restrain the expression of his own feelings the delicacy with which he refrained from allusions to her own part in the love passage of a former day-the whole spirit which pervaded the epistle, and pierced pathetically to her heart, through the simple resignation of its language. Her heart dissolved once more in tears of tenderness and sympathy. "Carlo, Carlo!" she murmured, though never before had she called him by that name, even to herself. "Thine, Carlo! thine! and why not thine? never another's will I be. A dream, a forgotten dream! No, never to me shalt thou be as such. Shame-humiliation to be thine! the talented, the good, the beautiful! No more meet thee! To be driven like a slave, to wed with one against whom my heart revolts—And why?-Not because he is more good, more talented, more beautiful, but richer, more nobly born! Carlo, you shall no longer toil alone; my talents, poor indeed, in comparison to yours, shall assist, shall lighten your labours. We will toil and sing for ever together, or when you are ill or weary, Aline will sing, and Carlo shall rest." Thus the excited girl mused-bright visions illumining her eyes. But," I depart to-morrow, from hence, from England." At the sight of those words, the visions seemed dispelled. To-morrow-left to the power of her stepmother, and the influence of Lord Mervyn, with only her weak spirit to oppose them—her fears, her cowardice!-oh, what should she do to stop him-to see him-to speak to him once more, though for what purpose she scarcely knew? Dim, undefined at least were the suggestions which arose in her mind. But who knows, to what dangerous path one hasty, ill-advised step may lead ? |