Meanwhile the horses stopped. Oswald alighted first. The cold sharp wind almost made him fancy himself landing in England: this freezing air was not like that of Italy, which bids young breasts forget all things save love. Oswald sank back into his gloom. Corinne, who knew the unsettled nature of his fancy, but too well guessed the cause. On the morrow they arrived at our Lady of Loretto, which stands upon an eminence, from whence is seen the Adriatic. While Oswald gave some orders for their journey, Corinne entered the church, where the image of the Virgin is inclosed in the choir of a small chapel, adorned with bas-reliefs. The marble pavement that surrounds the sanctuary is worn by pilgrim knees. Corinne, moved by these marks of prayer, knelt on the stones so often pressed by the unfortunate, and addressed the type of heavenly truth and sensibility. Oswald here found her bathed in tears. He did not understand how a woman of her mind could bow to the practices of the ignorant. She guessed this by his looks, and said: "Dear Oswald, are there not many moments when we dare not raise our hopes to the Supreme Being, or breathe to him the sorrows of our hearts? Is it not pleasing, then, to behold a woman as intercessor for our human weakness? She suffered on this earth, for she lived on it; to her I blush not to pray for you, when a petition to God himself would overawe me."--"I cannot always directly supplicate my Maker," replied Oswald. "I, too, have my intercessor: the guardian angel of children is their father: and since mine has been in heaven, I have oft received an unexpected solace, aid, and composure, which I can but attribute to the miraculous protection whence I still hope to escape from my perplexities."--"I comprehend you," said Corinne, "and believe there is no one who has not some mysterious idea of his own destiny--one event which he has always dreaded, and which, though improbable, is sure to happen. The punishment of some fault, though it be impossible to trace the connection our misfortunes have with it, often strikes the imagination. From my childhood I trembled at the idea of living in England. Well; my inability to do so may be my worst regret; and on that point I feel there is something unconquerable in my fate, against which I struggle in vain. Every one conceives his life interiorly a contrast to what it seems we have a confused sense of some supernatural power, disguised in the form of external circumstance, while itself alone is the source of all our actions. Dear friend, minds capable of reasoning forever plunge into their own abyss, but always fail to fathom it." Oswald, as he heard her speak thus, wondered to find that, while she was capable of such glowing sentiments, her judgment still could hover over them, like their presiding genius. "No," he frequently said to himself, "no other society on earth can satisfy the man who has possessed such a companion as this."