“This delusion would soon cease. The stiff and stern monotony of the parterre, where even the productions of nature held their place as if under the constraint of duty, forced the conviction of its unnatural regularity on her eye and soul, and she turned to heaven for relief. Who does not, even in the first sweet agony of passion? Then we tell that tale to heaven which we would not trust to the ear of mortal--and in the withering hour that must come to all whose love is only mortal, we again call on that heaven which we have intrusted with our secret, to send us back one bright messenger of consolation on those thousand rays that its bright, and cold, and passionless orbs, are for ever pouring on the earth as if in mockery. We ask, but is the petition heard or answered? We weep, but do not we feel that those tears are like rain falling on the sea? _Mare infructuosum._ No matter. Revelation assures us there is a period coming, when all petitions suited to our state shall be granted, and when “tears shall be wiped from all eyes.” In revelation, then, let us trust--in any thing but our own hearts. But Isidora had not yet learned that theology of the skies, whose text is, “Let us go into the house of mourning.” To her still the night was day, and her sun was the “moon walking in its brightness.” When she beheld it, the recollections of the isle rushed on her heart like a flood; and a figure soon appeared to recal and to realize them. “That figure appeared to her every night without disturbance or interruption; and though her knowledge of the severe restraint and regularity of the household caused her some surprise at the facility with which Melmoth apparently defied both, and visited the garden every night, yet such was the influence of her former dream-like and romantic existence, that his continued presence, under circumstances so extraordinary, never drew from her a question with regard to the means by which he was enabled to surmount difficulties insurmountable to all others.