Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave, Or summer succeed to the winter of death? Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save The spirit, that faded away with the breath. Eternity points in its amaranth bower, Where no clouds of fate o’er the sweet prospect lower, Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower, When woe fades away like the mist of the heath. She ceased: the melancholy cadence of her angelic voice died in faint reverberations of echo away, and once again reigned stillness. Now fast approached the hour; and, ere ten had struck, a stranger of towering and gigantic proportions walked along the ruined refectory: without stopping to notice other objects, he advanced swiftly to Eloise, who sat on a misshapen piece of ruin, and throwing aside the mantle which enveloped his figure, discovered to her astonished sight the stranger of the Alps, who of late had been incessantly present to her mind. Amazement, for a time, chained each faculty in stupefaction; she would have started from her seat, but the stranger, with gentle violence grasping her hand, compelled her to remain where she was. “Eloise,” said the stranger, in a voice of the most fascinating tenderness--“Eloise!” The softness of his accents changed, in an instant, what was passing in the bosom of Eloise. She felt no surprise that he knew her name: she experienced no dread at this mysterious meeting with a person, at the bare mention of whose name she was wont to tremble: no, the ideas which filled her mind were indefinable. She gazed upon his countenance for a moment, then, hiding her face in her hands, sobbed loudly. “What afflicts you, Eloise?” said the stranger: “how cruel, that such a breast as thine should be tortured by pain!” “Ah!” cried Eloise, forgetting that she spoke to a stranger; “how can one avoid sorrow, when there, perhaps, is scarce a being in the world whom I can call my friend; when there is no one on whom I lay claim for protection?” “Say not, Eloise,” cried the stranger, reproachfully, yet benignly; “say not that you can claim none as a friend--you may claim me. Ah! that I had ten thousand existences, that each might be devoted to the service of one whom I love more than myself! Make me then the repository of your every sorrow and secret. I love you, indeed I do, Eloise, and why will you doubt me?” “I do not doubt you, stranger,” replied the unsuspecting girl; “why should I doubt you? for you could have no interest in saying so, if you did not.--I thank you for loving one who is quite, quite friendless; and, if you will allow me to be your friend, I will love you too. I never loved any one, before, but my poor mother and Marianne. Will you then, if you are a friend to me, come and live with me and Marianne, at St. Irvyne’s?”