If Stanhope could have that moment clasped her to his arms, and poured forth upon her bosom his thanks for her renewed avowal, what would he not have given! But he could only press her arm as it lay within his own, and murmur his gratitude. Oh! the ecstacy of that moment: it repayed him for all he had suffered during the months he had been separated from Ellen. Their conversation was long and full of moment to their future lives. Urged passionately by her lover, and half persuaded by her own heart, Ellen consented at length to meet Stanhope in her morning walks; and then, bursting afresh into tears, left him at the corner of the street, not far from her father’s princely dwelling, and hurried home. It was a hard task for her that day at the dinner table to conceal her emotion; but she did so. When the meal was over, she hurried to her room to indulge in her feelings. Had she done right in thus consenting to meet her lover clandestinely? Her heart answered yes—her reason no. A fresh flood of tears came to her relief, and thus tortured by conflicting emotions, she sank toward morning into a troubled sleep. Well—they met—once—twice—daily. It was a dream of bliss, but it could not last. Every time they saw each other their love grew stronger. Yet Ellen, although urged by her lover to elope, was unwilling to consent to it. Indeed on this point she was inflexible. With tears she said to herself in the solitude of her chamber, that if she had erred at first through her inexperience, and allowed her affections to be placed irrevocably on one whom her parent even unjustly disapproved of, she would not go farther on the path of disobedience. She was young, and she _hoped_. She trusted that time would make all right. But a bolt was about to fall upon her head, which, for the honor of human nature, we would gladly escape recording. We have said little as yet directly of Mr. Howard, though a glimmering of his character must have been perceptible in the foregoing pages. Mean, crafty, purse-proud, haughty, and inflexible to obstinacy, he had nothing in common with his daughter, except the tie of relationship. Ellen was like her mother in every thing, but that mother had been long since dead,—and could the secrets of her grave have been unfolded, perhaps it might have been seen that she died of a broken heart. Yes! her husband was her destroyer. But he did nothing which made him amenable to the law. No. He was always outwardly respectful to his wife. It was only at home that his brutality broke forth; and Mrs. Howard was too meek and forgiving to publish her own sufferings. And thus like too many gentle beings in our midst she drooped, and sickened, and died; and when they laid her in her gorgeous coffin, and bore her to her tomb, amid all the splendor of wealth, how little did they think that she had been murdered—aye! murdered by her husband’s brutality. God help the thousands who thus die of a broken heart!