It was on a journey to Scotland that I passed through the small village in which the Spanish lady had shrouded her fading beauty and her breaking heart. I sent up my name to her, and was admitted into her little drawing-room immediately. Oh! how altered she seemed that day. All the colour had disappeared from her cheek, and all the freshness from her lip; she had still the white hand and arm, which I had seen running so lightly over the strings of her theorbo, but they were wasted terribly away; and though her long dark locks were braided as carefully as they had been in happier days, they did not communicate the idea of brightness and brilliancy which they had been wont to scatter over her countenance. She endeavoured to rise from the sofa as I entered; but the effort was too great for her, and she sat down without speaking. She was evidently dying; and the contrast between the parting and the meeting, and the vague vision of the past and the melancholy reality of the present, struck me so forcibly and so sadly, that I stayed with my hand on the door and burst into tears. “We are not to weep thus,” she said; “he fell like a true Spaniard, and I only regret that I was not born a man, that I might have put my rifle to my shoulder and died with my hand in his. Pray sit down; it is a long time since I have seen any friend who can talk to me of the old days.” I suggested that she ought to endeavour to think less of the losses she had endured, and to dwell more cheerfully on the tranquillity which might yet be in store for her. “I should despise you now,” she answered, “if I could think this advice came from your heart. What! you would have me forget him, whose life was my dearest pleasure, and whose death is my greatest pride. Look at this ring,” and she took off a small gold one, and made me remark its motto--_fiel a la muerte_; “he would not have bade me wear this in remembrance of him, if he had not known that he was doomed to perish, if he had not known too that I should be happy afterwards in thinking and dreaming of him.” Then she began to recall minutely every scene and circumstance of our intimacy; inquiring about every study or amusement we had meditated or enjoyed together, whether I had bettered my flute-playing, whether I had studied landscape, whether I had finished Calderon. She wearied herself with talking; and then, leaning her head on the cushions, desired me to take up a book from the table and read to her, that she might hear whether my pronunciation was improved. I took up the first that presented itself; it was only a manuscript book, containing many scraps and fragments from different authors in her brother’s writing. I laid it down again, and took up the next: it was a Dante which I had given her: I opened it at random and began to read the story of Francesca. When I came to the celebrated lines-- Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria----