image is mixed in my imagination with all the glories of nature--because your voice, when I heard it first, was something in accordance with the murmur of the ocean, and the music of the stars. And still its tones recal the unimaginable blessedness of those scenes where first I heard it,--and still I listen to it like an exile who hears the music of his native country in a land that is very far off,--because nature and passion, memory and hope, alike cling round your image; and amid the light of my former existence, and the gloom of my present, there is but one form that retains its reality and its power through light and shade. I am like one who has traversed many climates, and looks but to one sun as the light of all, whether bright or obscure. I have loved once--and for ever!” Then, trembling at the words she uttered, she added, with that sweet mixture of maiden pride and purity that redeems while it pledges the hostage of the heart, “The feelings I have entrusted you with may be abused, but never alienated.”--“And these are your _real_ feelings?” said Melmoth, pausing long, and moving his frame like one agitated by deep and uneasy thoughts. “Real!” repeated Isidora, with some transient glow on her cheek--“real! Can I utter any thing but what is real? Can I so soon forget my existence?” Melmoth looked up once more as she spoke--“If such is your resolution,--if such be your feelings indeed,”---- “And they are!--they are!” exclaimed Isidora, her tears bursting through the slender fingers, which, after extending towards him, she clasped over her burning eyes. “Then look to the alternative that awaits you!” said Melmoth slowly, bringing out the words with difficulty, and, as it appeared, with some feeling for his victim; “a union with the man you cannot love,--or the perpetual hostility, the wearying, wasting, almost annihilating persecution of your family! Think of days that”---- “Oh let me not think!” cried Isidora, wringing her white and slender hands; “tell me--tell me what may be done to escape them!”--“Now, in good troth,” answered Melmoth, knitting his brows with a most cogitative wrinkle, while it was impossible to discover whether his predominant expression was that of irony or profound and sincere feeling--“I know not what resource you have unless you wed me.”--“Wed you!” cried Isidora, retreating from the window--“Wed you!” and she clasped her hands over her pale forehead;--and at this moment, when the hope of her heart, the thread on which her existence was suspended, was within her reach, she trembled to touch it. “Wed you!--but how is that possible?”--“All things are possible to those who love,” said Melmoth, with his sardonic smile, which was hid by the shades of the night. “And you will wed me, then, by the rites of the church of which I am a member?”--“Aye! or of any other!”--“Oh speak not so wildly!--say not _aye_ in that horrible voice! Will you wed me as a Christian maiden