These were the last words he ever uttered. Augusta fell almost lifeless on her father's bosom, but what was a moment before the temple of an immortal spirit, was now but dust and ashes. At the same moment an orphan and a bride, she was incapable of comprehending the startling realities of her situation. The images that flitted through her mind, were like the phantasmagoria of a dream--a vague impression of something awful and indescribable having occurred, a wild fear of something more awful still impending, filled her imagination and paralyzed her frame. But Allison had a full and aching sense of the responsibilities so unexpectedly imposed upon him. He mourned for the venerated and generous friend so suddenly snatched away; but he grieved most of all, that his last act had placed in his keeping that to which he felt he had no legitimate right. No selfish repinings filled his heart--but to find himself _married_, joined irrevocably to a woman who had given him so many proofs of personal aversion; who never, till that evening, had evinced towards him the slightest sensibility--a woman whom he did not love, and whose superior fortune burdened him with a painful sense of obligation--there was something inexpressibly galling and humbling in these circumstances, to the sensitive and high-minded Allison. Tenderness, however, mingled with the bitterness of his reflections; and even then, he could have taken her to his heart, and wept over her tears of sympathy and sorrow, had he not dreaded that she would recoil from his embraces. He did not intrude on the sacredness of her grief, and for days she buried herself in the solitude of her chamber. She admitted no one but her chosen friend, Miss Manning, who represented her as inconsolable, either sunk in a torpor, from which nothing could arouse her, or in a state of nervous excitement still more distressing. He waited, hoping that time would restore her to comparative composure, and that she would be willing to receive from him the consolations of friendship. Finding, at length, that she persevered in her system of solitary grief, and that time, while it must, according to its immutable laws, soften her anguish for her father's death, probably increased her dread of the shackles that bound her, his resolution was taken. In a short time everything was arranged for his departure to a foreign land. The ship, in which he was bound a passenger, was ready to sail, when he requested a parting interview with Augusta. A parting interview!--Augusta was roused at that sound, from the selfishness of her grief. He was going into banishment, and she was the cause. For the first time since the bridal ceremony, the thought forced itself into her mind, that _he_ too might have cause for sorrow, and that _his_ happiness might be sacrificed as well as her own. Allison was greatly shocked, to see the change wrought in her radiant face. He was so much agitated, he forgot everything he purposed to say, and