"It has indeed--but, Tyrrel, when was it otherwise with engagements formed in youth and in folly? You and I would, you know, become men and women, while we were yet scarcely more than children--We have run, while yet in our nonage, through the passions and adventures of youth, and therefore we are now old before our day, and the winter of our life has come on ere its summer was well begun.--O Tyrrel! often and often have I thought of this!--Thought of it often? Alas, when will the time come that I shall be able to think of any thing else!" The poor young woman sobbed bitterly, and her tears began to flow with a freedom which they had not probably enjoyed for a length of time. Tyrrel walked on by the side of her horse, which now prosecuted its road homewards, unable to devise a proper mode of addressing the unfortunate young lady, and fearing alike to awaken her passions and his own. Whatever he might have proposed to say, was disconcerted by the plain indications that her mind was clouded, more or less slightly, with a shade of insanity, which deranged, though it had not destroyed, her powers of judgment. At length he asked her, with as much calmness as he could assume--if she was contented--if aught could be done to render her situation more easy--if there was aught of which she could complain which he might be able to remedy? She answered gently, that she was calm and resigned, when her brother would permit her to stay at home; but that when she was brought into society, she experienced such a change as that which the water of the brook that slumbers in a crystalline pool of the rock may be supposed to feel, when, gliding from its quiet bed, it becomes involved in the hurry of the cataract. "But my brother Mowbray," she said, "thinks he is right,--and perhaps he is so. There are things on which we may ponder too long;--and were he mistaken, why should I not constrain myself in order to please him--there are so few left to whom I can now give either pleasure or pain?--I am a gay girl, too, in conversation, Tyrrel--still as gay for a moment, as when you used to chide me for my folly. So, now I have told you all,--I have one question to ask on my part--one question--if I had but breath to ask it--Is _he_ still alive?" "He lives," answered Tyrrel, but in a tone so low, that nought but the eager attention which Miss Mowbray paid could possibly have caught such feeble sounds. "Lives!" she exclaimed,--"lives!--he lives, and the blood on your hand is not then indelibly imprinted--O Tyrrel, did you but know the joy which this assurance gives to me!" "Joy!" replied Tyrrel--"joy, that the wretch lives who has poisoned our happiness for ever?--lives, perhaps, to claim you for his own?" "Never, never shall he--dare he do so," replied Clara, wildly, "while water can drown, while cords can strangle, steel pierce--while there is a precipice on the hill, a pool in the river--never--never!"