What delightful evenings we might now have enjoyed had not the dark passion of Ernest thrown such a chilling shadow over the household! Richard came almost every night, for it was his _home_. He loved and reverenced Mrs. Linwood, as if she were his own mother. Edith was to him as a sweet and gentle sister; and though never by word or action he manifested a feeling for me which I might not sanction and return as the wife of another, I knew, that no one had supplanted me in his affections, that I was still the Gabriella whom he had enshrined in his boyish heart,--in "all save hope the same." He saw that I was unhappy, and he pitied me. The bright sparkle of his eye always seemed quenched when it turned to me, and his voice when it addressed me had a gentler, more subdued tone. But his spirit was so sparkling, so elastic, his manners so kind and winning, his conversation so easy and graceful, it was impossible for sadness or constraint to dwell long in his presence. Did I never contrast his sunny temper, his unselfish disposition, his happy, genial temperament, with the darkness and moodiness and despotism of Ernest? Did I never sigh that I had not given my young heart to one who would have trusted me even as he loved, and surrounded me with a golden atmosphere of confidence, calm and beautiful as an unclouded autumn sky? Did I not tremble at the thought of passing my whole life in the midst of the tropic storms, the thunders and lightnings of passions? And yet I loved Ernest with all the intensity of my first affection. I would have sacrificed my life to have given peace to his troubled and warring spirit. His self-imposed sufferings almost maddened me. My heart, as it secretly clung to him and followed his lonely steps as, faithful to his frantic vow, he withdrew from domestic and social intercourse,--longed to express its emotions in words as wildly impassioned as these:-- "Thou hast called me thine angel in moments of bliss, Still thine angel I'll prove 'mid the horrors of this. Through the furnace unshrinking thy steps I'll pursue, And shield thee, and save thee, and perish there too." Oh, most beloved, yet most wretched and deluded husband, why was this dark thread,--this cable cord, I might say,--twisted with the pure and silvery virtues of thy character?