“His mother, who was seriously implicated in the same crime, had been examined, and for want of evidence against her, discharged. Notwithstanding her acquittal, the popular feeling was so hostile to Madame L’Orient, that she was not only compelled to break up her establishment, but to leave the neighborhood. After a great deal of difficulty, I contrived to secure a private interview with Madame, before she left the city and inquire the fate of my infant. ‘Dead and buried in the Cemetière des Innocens,’ was the answer I received. She had lived but an hour, and died about the same time that I had fallen into a state of insensibility. What more had I to do in Paris, or even in the world. My life seemed blighted, my heart broken, my doom sealed at fifteen years of age. My injured and unsuspicious parents, concerned for their daughter’s failing health and spirits, took me to the German baths, thence to Sicily, thence over Europe, and finally brought me home to England, in the faint hope that quietness and native air might do for me that which travel and change of scene had failed to do. In vain! there was no hope, or help for me in this world. My sorrow was deepened by the necessity of concealing its dreadful cause. I dared not confide that secret passage of my life to either of my parents. You know the uncompromising arrogance of Sir Parke, and the sensitive delicacy of Lady Morelle. Their only and cherished daughter the wife of a ——! The revelation would have killed my mother, would have driven my father mad! I bore my sorrow—my punishment in silence; but do you wonder at my deep, incurable melancholy? As a last resort, they took me up to London, presented me at Court, and introduced me into the whirl of fashionable life. My debut in society made what is called ‘a sensation,’—my career was, in common parlance, ‘successful.’ I had many ‘eligible’ suitors; perhaps the sadness that shrunk from observation and attention, was from its very strangeness attractive. At length you came, and saw and loved me, all unworthy as I was, and I soon perceived in you the master of my heart and life! But, oh! the unspeakable agony of feeling this, and feeling too, that I never, never, never could be yours! So, at the last day, feels the sinner who sees, at length, that for some fair poisonous apple of Sodom, unlawfully seized on earth, he has lost the kingdom of Heaven! _Do you still wonder at my deep, incurable melancholy?_ We parted I bore that sharp anguish, as I had borne all the rest, even as the just retribution of my sin!” “My dear, dear Stella! you reproach yourself without measure.”