“She sits beside him all day--she watches that eye whose light was life, and sees it fixed on her in glassy and unmeaning complacency--she dreams of that smile which burst on her soul like the morning sun over a landscape in spring, and sees that smile of vacancy which tries to convey satisfaction, but cannot give it the language of expression. Averting her head, she thinks of other days. A vision passes before her.--Lovely and glorious things, the hues of whose colouring are not of this world, and whose web is too fine to be woven in the loom of life,--rise to her eye like the illusions of enchantment. A strain of rich remembered music floats in her hearing--she dreams of the hero, the lover, the beloved,--him in whom were united all that could dazzle the eye, inebriate the imagination, and melt the heart. She sees him as he first appeared to her,--and the mirage of the desert present not a vision more delicious and deceptive--she bends to drink of that false fountain, and the stream disappears--she starts from her reverie, and hears the weak laugh of the sufferer, as he moves a little water in a shell, and imagines he sees the ocean in a storm! * * * * * * * * * “She has one consolation. When a short interval of recollection returns,--when his speech becomes articulate,--he utters _her_ name, not that of Margaret, and a beam of early hope dances on her heart as she hears it, but fades away as fast as the rare and wandering ray of intellect from the lost mind of the sufferer! * * * * * * “Unceasingly attentive to his health and his comforts, she walked out with him every evening, but led him through the most sequestered paths, to avoid those whose mockful persecution, or whose vacant pity, might be equally torturing to her feelings, or harassing to her still gentle and smiling companion. “It was at this period,” said the stranger to Aliaga, “I first became acquainted with---- I mean--at this time a stranger, who had taken up his abode near the hamlet where Elinor resided, was seen to watch the two figures as they passed slowly on their retired walk. Evening after evening he watched them. He knew the history of these two unhappy beings, and prepared himself to take advantage of it. It was impossible, considering their secluded mode of existence, to obtain an introduction. He tried to recommend himself by his occasional attentions to the invalid--he sometimes picked up the flowers that an unconscious hand flung into the stream, and listened, with a gracious smile, to the indistinct sounds in which the sufferer, who still retained all the graciousness of his perished mind, attempted to thank him.