While resting with her foot on the step of the carriage, about to enter it, Julia, whose looks were depressed from shame, saw a fluid that was discoloured with tobacco fall on her shoe and soil her stocking. Raising her eyes with disgust, she perceived that the wind had wafted it from the mouth of Antonio, as he held open the door--and the same blast throwing aside his screen of silk, discovered a face that was deformed with disease, and wanting of an eye! Our travellers returned to the city by the way of Montreal and Lake Champlain; nor was it until Julia had been the happy wife of Charles Weston for more than a year, that she could summon resolution to own that she had once been in love, like thousands of her sex, "with a man of straw!" ================================= = HEART. ---oOo--- "Some live in airy fantasies, And in the clouds do move, And some do burn with inward flames-- But few know how to love." ANON. BALLAD CHAPTER I. ON one of those clear, cold days of December, which so frequently occur in our climate, two very young women were walking on the fashionable promenade of New-York. In the person of the elder of these females there was exhibited nothing more than the usual indications of youth and health; but there were a delicacy and an expression of exquisite feeling in the countenance of her companion, that caused many a plodding or idle passenger to turn and renew the gaze, which had been attracted by so lovely a person. Her figure was light, and possessed rather a character of aerial grace, than the usual rounded lines of earthly beauty; and her face was beaming more with the sentiments of the soul within, than with the ordinary charms of complexion and features. It was precisely that kind of youthful loveliness that a childless husband would pause to contemplate as the reality of the visions which his thoughts had often portrayed, and which his nature coveted as the only treasure wanting to complete the sum of his earthly bliss. It truly looked a being to be loved without the usual alloy of our passions; and there was a modest ingenuousness which shone in her air, that gently impelled the hearts of others to regard its possessor with a species of holy affection. Amongst the gay throng, however, that thoughtlessly glided along the Broadway, even this image of female perfection was suffered to move unnoticed by hundreds; and it was owing to the obstruction offered to the passage of the ladies, by a small crowd that had gathered on the side-walk, that a gentleman of uncommon personal endowments enjoyed an opportunity of examining it with more than ordinary attention. The eldest of the females drew her companion away from this impediment to their passage, by moving towards the opposite side of the street, and observing, as they crossed, with an indifference in her manner-- "It is nothing, Charlotte, but a drunken man; if people will drink, they must abide the consequences."