"You have never loved like me, Gabriella, or you would never dream of the possibility of its being extinguished," said he, in a tone of indescribable wretchedness. "I may alienate you from me, by the indulgence of insane passions, by accusations repented as soon as uttered,--I may revile and persecute,--but I can never cease to love you." "O Ernest!" It was all gone,--pride, anger, despair, were gone. The first glance of returning love,--the first acknowledgment of uttered wrong, were enough for me. I was in his arms, next to his heart, and the last hours seemed a dream of darkness. I was happy again; but I trembled even in the joy of reconciliation. I realized on what a slender thread my wedded happiness was hanging, and knew that it must one day break. Moments like these were like those green and glowing spots found on the volcano's burning edge. The lava of passion might sweep over them quick as the lightning's flash, and beauty and bloom be covered with ashes and desolation. And so the cloud passed by,--and Ernest was, if possible, more tender and devoted, and I tried to cast off the prophetic sadness that would at times steal over the brightness of the future. I was literally giving up all for him. I no longer derived pleasure from the society of Mr. Regulus. I dreaded the sportive sallies of Dr. Harlowe. I looked forward with terror to the return of Richard Clyde. I grew nervous and restless. The color would come and go in my face, like the flashes of the aurora borealis, and my heart would palpitate suddenly and painfully, as if some unknown evil were impending. Did I now say, as I did a few months after my marriage, that I preferred the stormy elements in which I moved, to the usual calm of domestic life? Did I exult, as the billows swelled beneath me and bore me up on their foaming crests, in the power of raising the whirlwind and the tempest? No; I sighed for rest,--for still waters and tranquil skies. It is strange, that a subject which has entirely escaped the mind, when associations naturally recall it, will sometimes return and haunt it, when nothing seems favorable for its reception. During my agitated interview with my unhappy father, I had forgotten Theresa La Fontaine, and the boy whose birthright I had unconsciously usurped. Mr. Brahan, in speaking of St. James and his _two_ wives, said they had both disappeared in a mysterious manner. That boy, if living, was my brother, my half-brother, the legitimate inheritor of my name,--a name, alas! he might well blush to bear. _If living_, where was he, and who was he? Was he the heir of his father's vices, and was he conscious of his ignominious career? These questions constantly recurred, now there was no oracle near to answer. Once, and only once, I mentioned them to Mrs. Linwood.