“Love! _I_ believe in love!” laughingly replied the capricious girl. “What! give up my maiden liberty for a pretty gallant,—oh! no, Sir Romance, madcap as I am, it has not come to that. Believe in love, forsooth! why I should sooner believe that men were wise or women fickle. Love may sound very well in a play, but I’ll have none of it. Pale cheeks, sighs, and the gilded fetters of a wife are not for a free maiden who, like the untamed hawk, would soar whither she lists. Love, indeed!” and she laughed merrily. Poor Grahame! how his sensitive heart throbbed at these words. He would have given worlds to be miles away. But the light, half-mocking laugh, all silvery though it was, with which she concluded, wrung even from him a reproach. “Oh! Isabel,” he said, and his low voice trembled with emotion, “_can_ you believe all this? Ah! little indeed then do you know of love.” “And who would presume to think that I _did_ know ought of it?” said Isabel, with a heightened color, and a flashing eye,—“I have no taste for jealous lovers or domineering lords; and I never saw one of your sex—I pray your pardon, fair sir—” and there was a slight scorn in her words, “who could tempt maiden to think twice of matrimony. Love indeed, forsooth! I pray Heaven to open men’s eyes to their vanity.” The moment she had ceased speaking, Isabel would have given any thing to recall her words. Hurried away by her love of raillery, and a little piqued at the tone of reproach in which Grahame ventured, she had given free license to her speech, and said things which she well knew she did not believe. Her lover turned deadly pale at her words. Believing now that she had all along been trifling with his feelings, he started to his feet, and looking at her a moment sadly, exclaimed bitterly, “Isabel! Isabel! May God forgive you for this; I leave you and forever;” and ere she could reply, or Grahame see the tears that gushed into her eye, he darted through the neighboring shrubbery and was lost to sight. Isabel looked after, and called faintly to him to return, but if he heard her, which was scarcely possible, he heeded it not. Pride prevented her from repeating the summons; she saw him no more. CHAPTER II. More than an hour elapsed before Isabel returned to the mansion, and when she did the traces of tears were on her cheeks. She instantly sought her chamber. “He said we parted forever—oh! surely he cannot have meant it,” she exclaimed, “he will be here to-morrow. And then—” and she paused, while a blush mantled over her cheeks, and invaded even her pearly bosom.