“And this is the being in whom I had garnered up all my heart’s best affections,” exclaimed Ashton, when he found himself alone. “This the divinity I have adored with a fervor no mortal bosom ever yet felt, and she could talk, heartlessly talk of the merest trifle, when she saw that my whole heart was bound up in her. Oh! would we had never met. But my delusion is over. I will fly. Mary! Mary! little did I dream that my love would meet with such a return.” Mary hurried to her chamber, and locking the door, she flung herself upon the bed, and burst into a flood of tears. How bitterly she reproached herself that her momentary coquetry had lost her the love of the only being for whom she cared. She did not disguise from herself her affection; she could scarcely tell why she had yielded to the impulse of that fatal moment; but she felt that she had lost irretrievably the esteem and the affections of her cousin. She would have given worlds to have recalled the last hour. Even now she might, by seeking him, and throwing herself at his feet, perhaps, regain his love. She rose to do so. But when her hand was on the lock she thought that he might spurn her. She hesitated. In another moment her pride had regained the mastery. “No—I cannot—I dare not. He will turn away from me. He will despise me. Oh! that I had never, never said those idle words,” and flinging herself again on the bed, she wept long and bitterly. Mary appeared that evening at the supper table, but in the cold and averted looks of Ashton, she saw only new causes for pride. The evening passed off heavily. As the time came for retiring, Henry approached her to bid her farewell. She thought her heart would burst her boddice, but commanding her emotion by a violent effort, she returned his adieu as calmly as it was given. And they parted, both in seeming carelessness, but one at least in agony. Henry Ashton had known his lovely cousin scarcely two years, but during that time, she had been to him a divinity. Never, in his wildest dreams, had he imagined a countenance more surpassingly beautiful than hers, and to her, accordingly, he had given his heart, with a devotion which had become a part of his nature. But much as he adored his cousin, he was not wholly blind to her faults. He saw that she loved admiration, and he feared she was too much of a flirt. Yet his love had gone on increasing, and, he fancied, not without a return. Led on by his hopes, he had, during a temporary visit at her father’s house, seized an opportunity to declare his passion, but how the half breathed avowal was checked, we will not recapitulate. Need we wonder at his sudden resolution to fly from her presence, and, by placing the ocean between them, to eradicate a passion for one whom he now felt to be unworthy of him? Few men could be more energetic than Ashton. In less than a week, he had sailed for Europe.