Walter de la Tremblade recoiled for a moment, and gazed upon her with a look of mute and stern inquiry; but then, moved and softened by all the agitating feelings of that night, the full flood of tenderness and affection swept every other emotion away; and casting his arms round her, he pressed her to his bosom, crying, "Whatever be thy faults, thou art my dead brother's child, thou art my own nurseling lamb, and woe to any one who has injured thee!" CHAPTER XXVII. As nature in the colours with which her beautifying hand has adorned the creation, for the glory of God, and the delight of his creatures, has far excelled in richness, and brightness, and variety of hues, all that the art of man can produce, merely leaving to his vain efforts the task of falsely imitating her; so does she, in the real course of events, far exceed in the marvellous and extraordinary, anything that imagination can conceive. The boundless springs of human passions and prejudices; the endless variety of human character; the infinite combinations which man and circumstances may afford, are every day offering more wonderful and striking scenes than the boldest poet would venture to display. There is not a house in the land but has its tragedy to tell; there is not a chamber that has not been stained by bitter and passionate tears; there is hardly one human heart that has not within itself its own tale of romance. But as it is the object of this history, but to depict events very ordinary in the days to which it relates--and as it is, indeed, the object of its author in all his works, to keep to calm and quiet probabilities, in order, if possible, to cure his fellow countrymen of that longing for over excitement, that moral gin-drinking which has become a vice amongst us, and teach them that there may be both pleasure and health in less stimulating beverages; he is anxious to explain every event as it took place, and to leave nothing to the charge of the marvellous. The reader has already inquired, how happened it, that Helen de la Tremblade, after taking the firm resolution of doing that which, though bitterly painful to her own feelings, she considered a duty to those who had shown her kindness and tenderness in her moment of distress, did not present herself before her uncle, on the first night of his solitary watching by the corpse of the old commander, De Liancourt;--and, had I been reading the work, instead of writing it, I should have asked the same question too. The answer is very simple, but it requires some detail.