Two or three weeks had now slowly dragged their weary length away, and no fresh intelligence had arrived. It was nearly a month since she had received the first, and she almost began to think he found it impossible to make his escape. The friendly governor might be removed. The mental aberration might, from over-excitement, have returned. She felt wicked in, for a moment, anticipating such a circumstance with any thing approaching to satisfaction; and yet the horror of another, and still more appalling, solution of the difficulty, that he had succeeded in his petition, and that he was on his way home, filled her with dismay, which almost bewildered her senses. One morning when she, as usual, received with trembling hands the packet of letters, she perceived one from her brother with an enclosure. With dizzy eyes she tore open the cover, and within found another, with the same dreaded post-mark of Gratz. Despair gave her courage to open it. It was indeed from Cresford, and be there told her the governor had proved his kindest friend; that the Emperor had listened favourably to his petition, and that he had every prospect of being able to commence his journey to England in a few days,—that as the time approached he felt ten thousand fears pass through his bosom. How much might have happened since he left his home. His Ellen, to whom he was now writing in the fulness of his heart, might possibly be gathered to the dead. His children! were they still in existence? “Oh, my dearest wife,” he continued, “you can form no conception of the distracted and confused state of my mind when I think of the changes that may have taken place among you. Of one thing I believe I may rest assured, though my own wayward disposition has sometimes been prone to unreasonable bursts of—jealousy, shall I say?—no, rather sensitiveness,—for you will do me the justice to confess I never was jealous of any individual,—of one thing I may rest assured, that I shall find you pure, true, and virtuous as I left you. The knowledge of your virtue has been my only consolation,—that conviction alone has supported me through all my misfortunes. In one short month I shall be at home, my Ellen, never, never again to part from you.” This confirmation of what she most dreaded came upon her with almost as great a shock as the first announcement of her misery. Yet she felt ungrateful at making such a return for all the affection expressed by Cresford, affection which had stood the test of time, which had been his guiding principle in absence, imprisonment, even in madness. The next moment she fancied that by such emotions she wronged Algernon, her own adored Algernon, who was for ever torn from her, and doomed to sufferings equal to her own. In another month Cresford said he should be at home. The time had nearly elapsed: he might arrive any day. There was not a moment to be lost!