She glanced towards Edith, whose beautiful face was paler and thinner than it was wont to be. She had pined for the brother of whom I had robbed her; for the world offered her nothing to fill the void left in the depths of her loving heart. We were all happier together. We cannot give ourselves up to the dominion of an exclusive passion, whatever it may be, without an outrage to nature, which sooner or later revenges the wrong inflicted. With all my romantic love for Ernest, I had often sighed for the companionship of one of my own sex; and now, restored to Edith, whom I had always regarded a little lower than the angels, I felt that if love was more rapturous than friendship, it was not more divine. They knew that I had suffered. They had sympathized with me, pitied me,--(if Mrs. Linwood blamed me for imprudence, she never expressed it); and I felt that they loved me better for having passed under the cloud. There was no allusion made to the awful events which were present in the minds of all, on our first reunion. If Mrs. Linwood noticed, that after the glow of excitement faded from my cheek it was paler than it was wont to be, she did not tell me so, but her kiss was more tender, her glance more kind. There was something in her mild, expressive eyes, that I translated thus:-- "Thank God that another hand than Ernest's has stolen the rose from thy cheek of youth. Better, far better to be humbled by a father's crimes, than blighted by a husband's jealousy." This evening reminded me so much of the first I ever passed with Ernest. He asked Edith for the music of her harp; and I sat in the recess of the window, in the shadow of the curtains, through whose transparent drapery the moonbeams stole in and kissed my brow. Ernest came and sat down beside me, and my hand was clasped in his. As the sweet strains floated round us, they seemed to mingle with the moonlight, and my spirit was borne up on waves of brightness and melody. Always before, when listening to Edith's angelic voice, I had wished for the same enchanting power. I had felt that thus I could sing, I could play, had art developed the gifts of nature, only with deeper passion and sensibility; but now I listened without conscious desire,--passive, happy, willing to receive, without desiring to impart. I felt like the pilgrim who, after a sultry day of weariness, pauses by a cool spring, and, laying himself down beneath its gushing, suffers the stream to flow over him,--till, penetrated by their freshness, his soul seems a fountain of living waters. Oh! the divine rapture of repose, after restlessness and conflict! I had passed the breakers. Henceforth my life would be calm and placid as the beams that illumined the night.