"Belmont Eggleston was then about twenty-five, very handsome, very talented, full of chivalric enthusiasm, and as refined and tender in sensibility as a woman. We met accidentally at a farmhouse, where a sudden shower drove us for shelter, and from that hour neither could forget the other. It was the old, old immemorial story--two fresh young souls united, two hearts exchanged, two lives for ever entangled. We walked and rode together, he taught me drawing, came now and then and spent the long summer afternoons, and grandmother liked and welcomed him; offered no obstacle to the strong current of love that ran like a golden stream for those few hallowed weeks, and afterward found only rapids and whirlpools. How deliriously happy I was! What a glory seems even now to linger about every tree and rock that we visited together! He told me he was very poor, and was encumbered with the care of an infirm mother and sister, and of a young brother who displayed great plastic skill, and gave promise of becoming renowned in sculpture, while Belmont was devoted to painting. He frankly explained his poverty, detailed his plans, expatiated with beautiful poetic fervour upon the hopes that gilded his future, and asked my sympathy and affection. While he was obscure he was unwilling to claim me, his love was too unselfish to transplant me from a sphere of luxury and affluence to one of pecuniary want; and he only desired that I would patiently wait until his genius won recognition. One star-lit night, standing on the bank of the river, with the perfume of jasmines stealing over us, I put my hand in his, and pledged my heart, my life for his. Nearly eight years have passed since then, but no shadow of regret has ever crossed my mind for the solemn promise I gave; and, despite all I have suffered, were it in my power to cancel the past I would not! Bitter waves have broken over me, but the memory of my lover, of his devotion, is sweeter, oh! sweeter than my hopes of heaven! God forgive me if it be sinful idolatry. It is the one golden link that held me back, that saves me now, from selling myself to Satan. In the midst of that rose-crowned June and July, in the height of my innocent happiness, mamma fell upon us, as a hawk swoops upon a dovecote, dividing a cooing pair. Disguising nothing, I freely told her all, and Belmont nobly pleaded for permission to prove his worthiness. Grandmother was a powerful ally, and perhaps the result might have been different, and mamma would have ultimately been won over, had not Erle Palma's counsel been sought. That cold-blooded tyrant has been the one curse of my life. But for him, I should be to-day a happy, loving wife. Do you wonder that I hate him? How I have longed for the seven Apocalyptic vials of wrath! He and mamma conferred. An investigation concerning the Egglestons elicited the fatal fact that some branch of the family had once been accused of embezzlement, had been prosecuted by Erle Palma, and in defiance of