An island, clothed with luxuriant foliage and redolent with the perfume of the tropics, lay sleeping on the crystal waters. On its southern side, the unruffled waves of a sheltered bay, broke with a murmuring sound upon a white and shelving beach. At the foot of this bay, embowered in a grove, was a small cluster of houses, whose white-washed walls, seen through the interlacing branches of the trees, many of the last laden with their golden fruit, looked the fit abodes of charity and domestic peace. The flickering airs, soft and fragrant as the breath of beauty, fanned the pale and attenuated cheek of an invalid, who, seated at the foot of a cotton-tree, looked wistfully to seaward. A boundless expanse of ocean, its undulating surface checkered with the prolonged shadows of detached and scarcely moving clouds alone met his anxious gaze. Beside him, with a look as wistful as his own, but fixed on his wasted features, stood a young and lovely female. Unconscious of her presence, he seemed lost in revery, and the silence was for some moments unbroken—for they were busied with the thoughts most congenial to the nature of each—his of active exertion and the strife of men; while hers, disinterested and pure, and true to the instinct of her sex, dwelt only on _his_ hopes, _his_ prospects, and _his_ future happiness. With a sigh, she broke the silence, and laying her hand gently upon his head, she said, “Oh, Edward! why this anxiety to leave us? Why this yearning for the sea?” “Mary, dearest Mary!” said he, looking up, “I knew not that you were near. Sit down, dear girl, and I will tell you my little history. It will be the best answer to your question, and your trustful nature deserves implicit confidence. You know,” said he, as she complied, and placed her hand in his, “you know that I am in the naval service of our country, and that the captain of the ship to which I belong, sent me ashore here some two months since, at the recommendation of the surgeon; and you know, too, that your father, finding that I was connected with some friends of his own in the United States, invited me to his house, where, like a ministering angel, you have wooed me from the embrace of death. This, save my unbounded gratitude and love, is all you know, and unsuspicious of others as you are yourself confiding, hoping like an angel, and believing what you hope, you have sought to learn nothing more. “I have no parents,” he proceeded to say, “and of a large family of children, I am the sole survivor. My father died when I was yet an infant; in my fourteenth year I lost my mother, and in the intervening time, one by one, my brothers and my sisters fell, all swept off by that insidious destroyer, whose victims waste away, even while the cheek is flushed and the eye brilliant with anticipations of renovated health and years of enjoyment. Oh, Mary! that you could have seen and known my sister—for she was near your present age, and in many things you much resemble her.”