As thus I pleaded with all the eloquence and earnestness of my nature, with my hands clasped in his, their firm, close, yet gentle fold grew firmer, closer still; and the cloud passing away from his countenance, it became luminous as I gazed. "You are right,--you are true," said he, "my dear, my noble Gabriella. Every shadow of a doubt vanishes before the testimony of your unselfish heart. Why did I not see this subject in the same clear, just light? Because my eyes are too often blinded by the mists of passion. Yes! you have pointed out the only way of extrication. The story of your mother's wrongs will not necessarily be exposed; and if it is, the sacred aegis of your filial love will guard it from desecration. We shall not remain here long. Spring will soon return; and in the sweet quietude of rural life, we will forget the tumultuous scenes of this modern Babel. You will not wish to return?" "No! never, never. That unhappy man! what will be his doom?" "Probably life-long imprisonment. Had I known who the offender was, I would have prayed the winds and waves to bear him to Icelandic seas, rather than have had his crime published to the world. It is, however, the retribution of heaven; and we must submit." "It seems so strange," said I, "to think of him alive, whose existence so long seemed to me a blank. When I was a child, I used to indulge in wild dreams about my unknown parent. I pictured him as one of the gods of mythology, veiling his divinity in flesh for the love of the fairest of the daughters of men. The mystery that wrapped his name was, to my imagination, like the cloud mantling the noonday sun. With such views of my lineage, which, though they became subdued as I grew older, were still exaggerated and romantic,--think of the awful plunge into the disgraceful truth. It seems to me that I should have died on my mother's grave, had not your arms of love raised me,--had you not breathed into my ear words that called me back from the cold grasp of death itself. In the brightness of the future I forgot the gloom of the past. Oh! had I supposed that he lived,--that he would come to bring on me public shame and sorrow, and through me, on you, my husband, I never would have exposed you to the sufferings of this night." And I clung to him with an entireness of confidence, a fulness of gratitude that swelled my heart almost to bursting. His face, beaming with unclouded love and trust, seemed to me as the face of an angel. I cared not for obloquy or shame, since he believed me true. I remembered the words of the tender, the devoted Gertrude:-- "I have been with thee in thine hour Of glory and of bliss, Doubt not its memory's living power To strengthen me in this."