"And I have destroyed them. I knew it would be so. I knew that I would prove a faithless guardian to a charge too dear. Gabriella, I am a wretch,--deserving your hatred and indignation. I have insulted your innocence, by suspicions I should blush to admit. Love, too strong for reason, converts me at times into a madman. I do not ask you to forgive me; but if you could conceive of the agonies I endure, you would pity me, were I your direst foe." Remorse, sorrow, tenderness, and love, all swept over his countenance, and gave pathos to his voice. I rose and sprang to his arms, that opened to receive me, and I clung to his neck, and wept upon his bosom, till it seemed that my life would dissolve itself in tears. Oh! it seemed that I had leaped over a yawning abyss to reach him, that I had found him just as I was losing him for ever. I was once more in the banqueting-house of joy, and "his banner over me was love." "Never again, my husband, never close your heart against me. I have no other home, no other refuge, no other world, than your arms." "You have forgiven me too soon, my Gabriella. You should impose upon me some penalty equal to the offence, if such indeed there be. Oh! most willingly would I cut off the hand so tenderly clasped in yours and cast it into the flames, if by so doing I could destroy the fiend who tempts me to suspect fidelity, worthy of eternal trust. You think I give myself up without a struggle to the demon passion, in whose grasp you have seen me writhing; but you know not, dream not, how I wrestle with it in secret, and what prayers I send up to God for deliverance. It seems impossible now that I should ever doubt, ever wrong you again, and yet I dare not promise. Oh! I dare not promise; for when the whirlwind of passion rises, I know not what I do." Had I not been conscious that I was concealing something from him, that while he was restoring to me his confidence, I was deceiving him, I should have been perfectly happy in this hour of reconciliation. But as he again and again clasped me to his bosom, and lavished upon me the tenderest caresses, I involuntarily shrunk from the pressure, lest he should feel the note, which seemed to flutter, so quick and loud my heart beat against it. "We are neither of us fit for the fashionable world, my Gabriella," said he; "we have hearts and souls fitted for a purer, holier atmosphere than the one we now breathe. If we had some 'bright little isle of our own,' where we were safe from jarring contact with ruder natures, remote from the social disturbances which interrupt the harmony of life, where we could live for love and God, then, my Gabriella, I would not envy the angels around the throne. No scene like this to-night would ever mar the heaven of our wedded bliss."