“Of my childhood I will say little, save that it passed like a fairy revel. Heiress of unbounded wealth, and last of a long-descended and honorable family, I was loved with a lavish and doating fondness, until a sudden and terrible disease, that cut down my parents in the pride and glory of their days, left me an orphan. From that grief, which, for a time, was so violent as to threaten the destruction of life and reason, I never fully recovered. Even when change of scene, the progress of time, and the natural elasticity of youth had so far changed me, that I appeared to have forgotten my sorrow, there lay ever upon my heart the shadow of the tomb. After a time I was sent to reside with my aunt, at the north of England. She was waiting in the castle gate to receive me when I arrived there, and beside her rode her only son—my Cousin Gerald. “How slight a thing may seal the whole future of our lives. We greet with a careless word and a momentary glance those whose fate is to color our own forever, and then pass on unthinking that henceforth our destiny is fixed. And yet the first time I saw him his image was stamped on my heart. Sorrow, change, wrong, despair have passed over it—but that image is there still. As I write, the curtain of the past seems drawn back, and again I greet thee, Gerald Bellamont. Again I meet the gaze of those flashing eyes—I hear the low, rich music of thy voice, and I feel the floods of deep, unquenchable love, rising in my soul for thee—thou loved so vainly. “Days, weeks and months passed on, and we spoke not of love, perchance knew not that the fatal spell was upon us. But at last the dream was broken—the hours of peaceful affection passed away. Gerald left us for a tour on the Continent, and with the struggle of that first parting came the knowledge of all that we were to each other—came the tumult, the trembling, the fearfulness of love. “At first the tedious hours were relieved by frequent letters from him, so full of tender affection, and withal so overflowing with youthful enjoyment of the new scenes around him, that even my fond heart was content to have him absent. Then letters came more seldom—then ceased altogether—and then, in the midst of our wonder and anxiety, he appeared suddenly in his old home; but so changed from the merry-hearted boy to the reserved, thought-stricken man, that my timid nature was abashed, and I dared not question him concerning the change which I _felt_ had come over his inmost being.