Lord Avondale pressed her lips to his. “God bless, and pardon thee, Calantha,” he cried. “Now even I can look upon thee and weep. O, how could’st thou betray me! ‘It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it: neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me; for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him: but it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend.’——We took sweet counsel together ... farewell! It was myself who led thee to thy ruin. I loved thee more than man should love so frail a being, and then I left thee to thyself. I could not bear to grieve thee; I could not bear to curb thee; and thou hast lost me and thyself. Farewell. Thy death has left me free to act. Thou had’st a strange power over my heart, and thou did’st misuse it.” As he uttered these words, while yet in presence of the lifeless form of his departed, his guilty wife, he prepared to leave the mournful scene. “Send the children to Allenwater, if you have mercy.” These were the last words he addrest to the nurse as he hurried from her presence. O man, how weak and impotent is thy nature! Thou can’st hate, and love, and kiss the lips of thy enemy, and strike thy dagger into the bosom of a friend. Thou can’st command thousands, and govern empires; but thou can’st not rule thy stormy passions, nor alter the destiny that leads thee on. And could Avondale thus weep for an ungrateful wife? Let those who live long enough in this cold world to feel its heartlessness, answer such enquiry. Whatever she had been, Calantha was still his friend. Together they had tried the joys and ills of life; the same interests united them: and the children as they turned to their father, pleaded for the mother whom they resembled.—Nothing, however, fair or estimable, can replace the loss of an early friend. Nothing that after-life can offer will influence us in the same degree. It has been said, that although our feelings are less acute in maturer age than in youth, yet the young mind will soonest recover from the blow that falls heaviest upon it. In that season of our life, we have it in our power, it is said, in a measure to repair the losses which we have sustained. But these are the opinions of the aged, whose pulse beats low—whose reasoning powers can pause, and weigh and measure out the affections of others. In youth these losses affect the very seat of life and reason, chill the warm blood in its rapid current, unnerve every fibre of the frame, and cause the phrenzy of despair.