him; and I knew not whether he had betrayed the truth, or invented a falsehood out of revenge. In this suspense I was very careful of his life; he was not so adroit a swordsman as myself; ten times might I have run him through the breast, but I contented myself with slightly wounding and disarming him; he seemed sensible of this. I led him to his own house, and brought him back to the conversation which our duel had interrupted. He then said: 'I am vexed at having so treated my cousin; but peril is like wine, it gets into one's head; yet, I can now excuse myself; it rested with you to kill me, and you spared my life; you could not be happy with her, she is too cunning; now to me that is nothing; for, charmed as I am both with her mind and person, she can never do anything to my disadvantage, and we shall be of service to each other when marriage makes a common interest. But you are romantic, and would be her dupe, therefore I cannot refuse the letters I promised you--read them, start for England, and do not worry yourself too much as to Madame d'Arbiguy's regrets. She will weep, because she loves you, but she will soon be comforted; she is too rational a woman to be long unhappy, or, above all, to appear so. In three months she shall be Madame de Maltigues.' All that he told me was proved true by her correspondence with him. I felt convinced that her blushing confession was a falsity, used but to force me into marriage. This was the basest imposition she had practised on me. She certainly loved me, for she even told Maltigues so; yet flattered him with such art, left him so much to hope, and studied to please him in a character so contrasted from that she had ever worn for me, that it was impossible to doubt her intention of marrying him, if her union with me was prevented. Such was the woman, Corinne, who had forever wrecked the peace of my heart and conscience. I wrote to her ere I departed, and saw her no more. As Maltigues predicted, I have since heard that she became his wife. But I was far from having tasted the bitterest drop that awaited me. I hoped to obtain my father's pardon; sure that, when I told him how I had been misled, he would love me the more, the more pitiable I became. After above a month's journey, by night and day, I crossed Germany, and arrived in England, full of confidence in the inexhaustible bounty of paternal love. Corinne, I had scarce landed, when a public paper informed me that my father was no more. Twenty months have passed since that moment, yet it is ever present, like a pursuing phantom. The letters that formed the words: 'Lord Nevil has just expired,' are written in flames, to which those of the volcano before us are nothing. I heard that he died of grief at my absence in France; fearing that I should renounce my military career, that I should marry a woman of whom he had an indifferent opinion, and settle in a country at war with my own, entirely forfeiting my reputation as an Englishman.