The slender, joyous maiden had expanded into the full-blown, thoughtful, lovely woman, who was now watching at the oriel window, alone, at sunset for the return of her young husband. Alone, ay, alone! For no child had been born to bless their union, and to draw yet closer the indissoluble bonds which man may not put asunder. Alone, ay, alone! as all her days were now spent, and some, alas! of her nights also. For the first months of her wedded life, when the pain of concealment had been once removed, Theresa was the happiest of the happy. The love, the passion, the affection of her boy bridegroom seemed to increase daily. To sit by her side, during the snowy days of winter, to listen to her lute struck by the master hand of the untaught improvisatrice, to sing with her the grand old ballads which she loved, to muse with her over the tomes of romance, the natural vein of which was not then extinguished in the English heart, to cull the gems of the rare dramatists and mighty bards of the era, which was then but expiring; and, when the early days of spring-time gave token of their coming, in the swelling flower-bud and bursting leaf, to wander with her through the park, through the chase, to ride with her over the heathery moorland hills, and explore the wild recesses of the forest, to have her near him in his field-sports, to show her how he struck the silvery salmon, or roused the otter from his sedgy lair—these seemed to be the only joys the boy coveted—her company his chiefest pleasure, the undisturbed possession of her charms his crowning bliss. But passion is proverbially short-lived; and the most so with those who, like Jasper, have no solidity of character, no stability of feeling, no fixed principles, whereon to fall back for support. One of the great defects of Jasper’s nature was a total lack of reverence for any thing divine or human—he had loved many things, he never had respected one. Accustomed from his earliest boyhood to see every thing yield to his will, to measure the value of every thing by the present pleasure it afforded him; he expected to receive all things, yet to give nothing. He was in fact a very pattern of pure selfishness, though no one would have been so much amazed as he had he heard himself so named. Time passed, and he grew weary, even of the very excess of his happiness—even of the amiability, the sweetness, the ever-yielding gentleness of his Theresa. That she should so long have charmed one so rash and reckless was the real wonder, not that she should now have lost the power of charming him. Nevertheless so it was; the mind of Jasper was not so constituted as to rest very long content with any thing, least of all with tranquillity— For quiet to hot bosoms is a hell!