rose-leaves fell in a snowy shower over her naked feet. 'Where is it?' said she, feeling about in the long grass. 'It isn't in the spot where I hid it. If she has found it, she may yet be a bride, and Ronald still her own.' She stooped down lower over the rose-bush, then rising hastily, I saw, with inexpressible agitation, the lost bracelet shining in the light that quivered with ghostlike lustre on her pallid face. With a most unearthly smile she clasped it on her wrist, and left the arbour, muttering in a low voice, 'I will not leave it here--lest she find out where it lies, and win back her bridal gift. I will keep it next my own heart, and she cannot reach it there.' Once more I followed the gliding steps of Eglantine, through the chill silence of night, till we ascended the stairs, and entered our own chamber. Quietly she laid herself down, as if she had just risen from her knees in prayer, and I perceived by her closed lids and gentle breathing, that a natural sleep was succeeding the inexplicable mysteries of somnambulism." "She was walking in her sleep, then, grandmother!" I exclaimed, drawing a long breath. "I thought so all the time; and poor Alice was really innocent! And what did Eglantine say the next morning, when she awaked, and found the bracelet on her arm?" "She was astonished and bewildered, and knew not what to think; but when I told her of all the events of the night, the truth of which the bracelet itself attested, she sunk back like one stricken with death. So many thoughts crowded upon her at once in such force, it is no wonder they almost crushed her with their power. The conviction that her love for Ronald could no longer be concealed, the remembrance of the accusation of Alice, which she had so indignantly repelled, the apparent meanness and turpitude of the art, though performed without any conscious volition on her part, the belief that another had been the victim of her involuntary crime, all united to bow her spirit to the dust. My heart bled at the sight of her distress, and, every feeling wrought up to unnatural strength by the exciting scenes I had witnessed, I promised never to wed Ronald, since the thought of our union had evidently made her so unhappy. Eglantine contended against this resolution with all her eloquence, but, alas! she was not destined long to oppose the claims of friendship to the pleadings of love. Her constitution was naturally frail, a fragility indicated by the extreme delicacy and mutability of her complexion, and the profusion of her pale golden hair. Day by day she faded--night by night she continued her mysterious rambles to the spot where she had first deposited the bracelet, till she had no longer strength to leave her bed, when her soul seemed to commune with the cherubim and seraphim, which, I doubt not, in their invisible glory surrounded her nightly couch. As she drew near the land of shadows, she lost sight of the phantom of earthly love in aspirations after a heavenly union.