The afflictions as well as the affections of woman are, if I may judge by my own experience, less profoundly acute than those of our own sex. Whether this be owing to constitution or education, or that the superior delicacy and fineness of the nervous system makes them more easily susceptible of new impressions to efface the old, I leave it to the physiologist or the psychologist to explain. The river that is the most ruffled at the surface is seldom the deepest. Thus with Miss M. Her passion, like "A little brook, swoln by the melted snow, That overflows its banks, pour'd in her heart A scanty stream, and soon was dry again."[14] In the course of three months the image of Mascalbruni, if not effaced from her mind, scarcely awakened a regret; and, save that at times a paleness overspread her cheek, rapidly chased by a blush, be it of virgin innocence or shame, no one could ever have discovered in her person or bearing any traces of the past. At this time a paragraph appeared in the Court Journal of the day, nearly in these words: "Strange rumours are afloat in the Sister Island respecting a certain Italian _marchese_, who figured at the clubs and about town during the last season. Revelations of an extraordinary nature, that hastened the return of the Honourable Mr. M. from the Continent, have led to a rupture of the marriage of the belle of the season, which we are authorised to say is definitively broken off." It was a telegraph that the field was open for new candidates; but no one on this side the water answered it. Louisa M. was no longer the same,--the _préstige_ was fled,--the bloom of the peach was gone. Scarcely had four months elapsed, however, when fresh preparations were made for her marriage, and a day fixed for the nuptials. The hour came; and behold, in the conventional language used on such occasions, the happy pair, Lady M. the bride-maids, and a numerous party of friends assembled in the chapel of the palace. The bishop officiated. The ceremony had already commenced, and the rite was on the point of being ratified by that mystical type of union--the ring--when a figure burst through the crowd collected about the doors; a figure more like a spectre than a man.