She was not aware of the services she rendered him in her turn. The very sight of her was the dearest--almost the only joy of his life. Devoured by disappointment, gloom, and remorse, he found no relief except in her artless prattle, or the consciousness of the good he did her. She perceived this, and was ever on the alert to watch his mood, and to try by every art to awaken complacent feelings. She did not know, it is true, the cause of his sufferings--the fatal memories that haunted him in the silence of night--and threw a dusky veil over the radiance of day. She did not see the fair, reproachful figure that was often before him to startle and appal--she did not hear the shrieks that rung in his ears--nor behold her floating away, lifeless, on the turbid waves, who, but a little before, had stood in all the glow of life and beauty before him. All these agonizing images haunted silently his miserable soul, and Elizabeth could only see the shadow they cast over him, and strive to dissipate it. When she could perceive the dark hour passing off, chased away by her endeavours, she felt proud and happy. And when he told her that she had saved his life, and was his only tie to it--that she alone prevented his perishing miserably, or lingering in anguish and despair, her fond heart swelled with rapture; and what soul-felt vows she made to remain for ever beside him, and pay back to the last the incalculable debt she owed! If it be true that the most perfect love subsists between unequals--no more entire attachment ever existed than that between this man of sorrows and the happy, innocent child. He, worn by passion, oppressed by a sense of guilt, his brow trenched by the struggles of many years--she, stepping pure and free into life, innocent as an angel, animated only by the most disinterested feelings. The link between them, of mutual benefit and mutual interest, had been cemented by time and habit--by each waking thought and nightly dream. What is so often a slothful, unapparent sense of parental and filial duty, was with them a living, active spirit, for ever manifesting itself in some new form. It woke with them, went abroad with them--attuned the voice, and shone brightly in the eyes.