"'The will of another,' I answered. 'Let that be a sufficient reason for urging your departure. If I am forbidden to see you in the parlor, I shall certainly be upbraided for speaking with you here.' "It was very imprudent in me to speak so freely of my step-mother's conduct. No questions of his should have drawn from me such an assertion. But I was so young and inexperienced, and I had been goaded almost to madness by her stinging rebukes. It was natural that I should wish to vindicate myself from the charge of rudeness her misrepresentations would bring against me. "'I find you in sadness and tears,' said he, in a low, gentle tone; so low it scarcely rose above the murmuring waves. 'They should not be the companions of beauty and youth. Let me be your friend,--let me teach you how to banish them.' "'No, no,' I cried, frightened at my own boldness in continuing the conversation so long. 'You are not my friend, or you would not expose me to censure. Indeed you are not.' "'I am gone; but tell me one thing,--you are not a prisoner?' "'O no; heaven forbid.' "'You walk on the ramparts.' "'Sometimes.' "'Adieu,--we shall meet again.' "He was gone, and sweetly lingered in my ear the echo of his gently persuasive voice. He had vanished like the bark that had just glided along the waters, and like that had left a wake of brightness behind. "I could not sleep. Excitement kept me wakeful and restless. I heard the measured tread of the sentinel walking his 'lonely round,' and it did not sound louder than the beating of my own heart. Hark! a soft, breezy sound steals up just beneath my window. It is the vibration of the guitar,--a deeptoned, melodious voice accompanies it. It is the voice of St. James. He sings, and the strains fall upon the stilly night, soft as the silver dew. "Gabriella, I told you with my dying lips never to unseal this manuscript till you were awakened to woman's destiny,--_love_. If you do not sympathize with my emotions, lay it down, my child, the hour is not yet come. If you have never heard a voice, whose faintest tones sink into the lowest depths of your soul,--if you have never met a glance, whose lightning rays penetrate to the innermost recesses of the heart, reseal these pages. The feelings with which you cannot sympathize will seem weakness and folly, and a daughter must not scorn a mother's bosom record. "Remember how lonely, how unfriended I was. The only eye that had beamed on me with love was closed in death, the only living person on whom I had any claims was cruel and unkind. Blame me not that I listened to a stranger's accents, that I received his image into my heart, that I enthroned it there, and paid homage to the kingly guest.