And Isabel Mordaunt?--Ah! not in these pages shall her history be told even in epitome. Perhaps for some future narrative, her romantic and eventful fate may be reserved. Suffice it for the present, that the childhood of the young heiress passed in the house of Lord Ulswater, whose proudest boast, through a triumphant and prosperous life, was to have been her father's friend; and that as she grew up, she inherited her mother's beauty and gentle heart, and seemed to bear in her deep eyes and melancholy smile some remembrance of the scenes in which her infancy had been passed. But for Him, the husband and the father, whose trials through this wrong world I have portrayed,--for him let there be neither murmurs at the blindness of Fate, nor sorrow at the darkness of his doom. Better that the lofty and bright spirit should pass away before the petty business of life had bowed it, or the sordid mists of this low earth breathed a shadow on its lustre! Who would have asked that spirit to have struggled on for years in the intrigues, the hopes, the objects of meaner souls? Who would have desired that the heavenward and impatient heart should have grown insured to the chains and toil of this enslaved state, or hardened into the callousness of age? Nor would we claim the vulgar pittance of compassion for a lot which is exalted above regret! Pity is for our weaknesses: to our weaknesses only be it given. It is the aliment of love; it is the wages of ambition; it is the rightful heritage of error! But why should pity be entertained for the soul which never fell? for the courage which never quailed? for the majesty never humbled? for the wisdom which, from the rough things of the common world, raised an empire above earth and destiny? for the stormy life?--it was a triumph! for the early death?--it was immortality! I have stood beside Mordaunt's tomb: his will had directed that he should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty line; and his last dwelling is surrounded by a green and pleasant spot. The trees shadow it like a temple; and a silver though fitful brook wails with a constant yet not ungrateful dirge at the foot of the hill on which the tomb is placed. I have stood there in those ardent years when our wishes know no boundary and our ambition no curb; yet, even then, I would have changed my wildest vision of romance for that quiet grave, and the dreams of the distant spirit whose relics reposed beneath it. THE END.