“’Tis an old tale, and often told;” yet, perhaps, the frequent occurrence of such events as are related in the following story may induce one to look back to the possible causes of their frequency. Colonel Fitz-Eustace was a person peculiarly calculated to inspire an enthusiastic passion to a warm-hearted and devoted girl. He was a soldier, and had but lately returned from the seat of war. The fame of his exploits had preceded his arrival, and in the social circle to which the young Eleanor Morton was admitted, as she emerged from girlhood to womanhood, he was received as one of the brave defenders of his native land, to whom England owed her eminent position in the scale of nations. Although military glory is in itself almost a passport to the female heart, its effect is certainly enhanced when the outward appearance is correspondingly heroic—and Colonel Fitz-Eustace looked like a hero. The commanding step, the lofty brow, the dark flashing eye, which might almost gaze on the sun without being dazzled; the deep, clear, sonorous voice, the rapid yet distinct utterance, which seemed as if it could make its commands heard and obeyed, through the roar of cannon and the din of battle, combined to form the _beau ideal_ of a warrior. And if that flashing eye should invariably beam with every softer expression, when it dwelt on one favoured object,—if that clear deep voice should suddenly become modulated to the low thrilling tone of tenderness when it addressed one person, what marvel if the bewildered girl yielded up her whole soul to the new and engrossing feeling which stole upon her, under the mask of admiration and gratitude! If ever love, fervent, pure, intense, found its shrine in the heart of woman, it did in that of Eleanor Moreton. But Colonel Fitz-Eustace was poor, and it was not till after many years of constancy on both sides that her parents consented to their union. She had passed long months of absence, long days of sickening hope, long nights of watching when, by the death of a distant relation, Colonel Fitz-Eustace became heir presumptive to the earldom of Sotheron, and in the mean time the possession of a competency which enabled their marriage to take place. Alas! it was not for Eleanor to know unmixed happiness. Climate and severe service had undermined her husband’s constitution; and although they both fancied that the life of untroubled serenity they had before them would restore him to health, she had the mortification to see him daily become weaker, paler, thinner. She could not blind herself to his illness; but she fancied in the autumn that the clear fresh air of winter would brace his feeble frame; in the winter, that the mildness of spring would give him renewed vigour; in the spring, that more settled weather would confirm his health; in summer, that autumn would bring the desired change.