As I thus mused, gazing down upon the lake, and away to the opposite hills, I observed, shooting out from behind an abrupt headland, a beautiful little sail-boat, in which stood Malcomb Douglas, and which, coming round the point, ran into a white pebbled bay, just in front of and beneath my window; and then from a clump of hazels emerged my idol, Charlotte, supported by no other than Harry Heath, who, it then occurred to me, had mentioned in the morning that he should take my gentle nurse out for a little exercise, as she was suffering from her close attendance upon me. She was beautiful in the distance, but as she clung to Harry’s arm, and looked up familiarly into his face, I felt a pang of jealousy, the first that had ever wrung my bosom. They stepped into the boat, and sat down together, and the little craft, as if proud of her freight, put off gallantly along the shining water. And Charlotte would be by Harry’s side—how long? “I fear you are in great pain,” came in anxious, inquiring tone upon my ear. I started—my jealous feelings were living on my face. “Just a little twinge,” I said, “occasioned by shifting my position indiscreetly.” “You should be very careful,” returned the good man who had been my surgeon and doctor from the first, and who now advanced, examined the position of my fractured limb, and took a seat beside me at the window. “How gallantly yon little boat holds her way, with her living freight of beauty, love and happiness,” he murmured, as if communing with himself; “and yet a single blast of the mountain storm may whelm her, with all her warm young hopeful heart, deep down in the cold weltering waves.” He finished with a deep sigh, and a cold shudder ran through my frame, in response to his fearful words. “Do not let me make you melancholy,” he said, after a pause; “but I am an old man, and have endured many sorrows, and have grown distrustful of the promises of happiness. Reverses come so unexpectedly.” “I think,” said I, timidly, “that the owners of this mansion must have known some strange reverse of fortune. It seems so singular to find the manners of a court, and the luxury of a palace, in a rough stone mountain dwelling.” The old gentleman looked earnestly in my face a moment. “I have never spoken of these things to any one,” he said, “but if you feel interested, I will tell you a tale, to beguile the time until the return of your companions. Fifty years ago—for I am now seventy-eight—the lady whom you have seen in this chamber was the loveliest creature that ever existed out of heaven.” “Fifty years!” I exclaimed, “why she is not more than fifty years old.”