Before I proceed any further, let me make a little necessary explanation concerning Ella’s picture. What Count Frederick said concerning her “father’s wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature was that of a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to in England, and whom he forsook for another, more to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious, and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting upon her and her family, he retired into as great obscurity as possible, on the continent, and married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered in his retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in his village, his fall in a duel with a brother of his former betrothed, were consequent upon that discovery. Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could be. The mystery which hung about the picture had prepared her mind to become the easy dupe of a well-told lie. Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of a raging fever, whilst a sad and anxious watcher, night and day, moved ever silently about the darkened chamber. This was the most trying period of Count Frederick’s life. Ever and anon the low murmuring of troubled dreams would fall like heavy curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently move aside the curtains and bend his ear to feel the parching breath, words fraught with the odor of youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light of childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on her mind, and smiles of love and tenderness and purity would gently play about her mouth, dimpling her beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would whisper: “Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God keep little Ella from all sin.’” Then there would be some uneasy motion, some momentary contortion, as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling sigh, scarce rising with its burden of despair. O, how he shook in very agony! Then all was still. Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal application, to extend, by some inappreciable virtue of its own, its subtle influence unceasingly through the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none but ecstatic moods of happiness or devotion ever called forth from her stores of melody; even the name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation and softened whisper, rose up like threatening spectres in Count Frederick’s night of mental darkness. He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness, watched every quiver of her parted lips, and could have rejoiced in the life of their occasional smile or tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless eyes, and the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never changed in all her emotions—appalled with the coldness of some fearful death: and he turned away. He would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being, but his heart was void; it was his brain that ached, for he knew that all that melancholy ruins had fallen from a sublime structure by his fell