Yet his heart, despite its sufferings, warmed with something like pleasure when, after a tedious journey of three days, he drew near his home, where he hoped to find Elizabeth. He had misgivings; he had asked her to return, but she might have written to request a delay--no! she was there; she had been there two days, anxiously expecting him. It is so sweet a thing to hear the voice of one we love welcoming us on our return home! It seems to assure us of a double existence; not only in our own identity--which we bear perpetually about with us--but in the heart we leave behind, which has thought of us--lived for us, and now beats with warm pleasure on beholding the expected one. On the whole earth Falkner loved none but Elizabeth. He hated himself; the past--the present--the future, as they appertained to him, were all detestable; remorse, grief, and loathsome anticipation made up the sum of feelings with which he regarded them: but here, bright and beautiful; without taint; all affection and innocence--a monument of his own good feelings, a lasting rock to which to moor his every hope, stood before him the child of his adoption; his heart felt bursting when he thought of all she was to him. Yet a doubt entered to mar his satisfaction--was she changed? If love had insinuated itself into her heart, he was rejected; at least the plenteous, abundant fountain, that gave from its own source, would be changed to the still waters that neither received increase nor bestowed any overflowing. Worse than this--she loved Gerard Neville, the son of his victim, he whose life was devastated by him, who would regard him with abhorrence. He would teach Elizabeth to partake this feeling. The blood stood chilled in Falkner's heart when he thought of thus losing the only being he loved on earth. He mastered these feelings when he saw her. The first moment, indeed, when she flew to his arms, and expressed with eager fondness her delight in seeing him again, was all happiness. She perceived the traces of suffering on his brow, and chided herself for having remained away so long; she promised never to absent herself thus again. Every remembered look and tone of her dear face and voice, now brought palpably before him, was a medicine to Falkner. He repressed his uneasiness, he banished his fears; for a few hours he made happiness his own again.