falsehood of the accusation upon the body of Prince Alphonso. Little inclined to the fray, Alphonso declared contemptuously, that the Count la Marche was so "treason-spotted" it would be disgrace to fight with him. Young Hugh, the son of Isabella, then threw down the gage in defence of his mother's reputation, but the cowardly prince again declined, alleging that the infamy of the family rendered the young knight unworthy so distinguished an honor. The last interview between Hugh de Lusignan, Count la Marche, and Isabella of Angoulême, ex-Queen of England, took place in the general reception room in the convent of Fontevraud. The dishonored noble sought his wife to acquaint her with the ruin of all their worldly prospects and the stain upon their knightly escutcheon. The last tones that he heard from those lips that once breathed tenderness and love were words of indignant upbraiding and heart-broken despair. All his attempts at consolation were repulsed with cruel scorn. She tore herself violently from his last fond embrace, sought again the secret chamber and assumed the veil, and for three years sister Felice, most inaptly so named, was distinguished among the nuns by her lengthened penances and multiplied prayers. The land of his nativity no longer possessed any attractions for the bereaved and disappointed count. All the associations of his youth became sources of painful reflection, and anxious to escape from the scenes where every familiar object was but a monument of a buried hope, he determined to share the crusade which St. Louis was preparing against the Infidel. He fell, covered with wounds and glory in one of the eastern battles, fighting beside his old antagonist Alphonso Count of Poictiers. VIOLANTE. CHAPTER I. "'Twas but for a moment--and yet in that time She crowded the impressions of many an hour: Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime, Which waked every feeling at once into flower!"