Herman was at a loss to comprehend the long silence of the Abbess, and the deep meditation, into which his narrative seemed to have plunged her. At length she recollected herself, and at her request he retired in search of the stranger, Helen having previously stipulated that he should not be present at their meeting. She was not certain, that in the first moments of emotion she should be sufficiently mistress of herself to conceal Emmeline’s name; and from what he had said, she collected, that it was not her friend’s intention at present to discover herself to her deliverer. A few hours elapsed, before Emmeline appeared leaning on the good Abbot: Helen now was no longer surprised, that in her present situation she had not been recognized by her former lover. She was sadly, sadly changed. It was necessary to have been quite as lovely as Emmeline, in order not to have lost every charm of person during the long and cruel period of her captivity; it was necessary to have possest as wonderful a strength of mind as hers, in order to escape with her senses unimpaired from the fearful shipwreck of all that was then most dear to her. Ah! Herman, Herman! that youthful vivacity, which appeared to you so high a crime, and for which you so unjustly blamed the innocent girl, was now fled for ever; its place was supplied by a mild and serious look of resignation, whose melancholy it’s true was sometimes illumined by a benevolent smile; but the smile was but momentary, and its lustre soon faded away. Yet thus it was, that you wished her to be; and thus must Emmeline needs appear to you a thousand times more pleasing, than while she yet shone with all the brilliant powers of unfaded youth, vivacity, and beauty. Beautiful in truth was Emmeline no more; but Emmeline was still interesting beyond expression. A slight frail nymph-like form, so light that it seemed as if air could have sustained her; a face, robbed of its roseate colour, but so dazzling fair, that she resembled a marble statue; a countenance, from which a painter might have formed a portrait of Christian Humility, and to which the consciousness of heroic self-denial and of long abstraction from all earthly hopes and pleasures, had given a saint-like expression that was almost supernatural; such now was the once brilliant Emmeline of Sargans!