“Oh! my friend,” said she, tenderly, “unwillingly do I tell you that for you she died; disappointed love, like a worm in the bud, destroyed the unhappy Julia; fruitless were all her endeavours to find you; till at last, concluding that you were lost to her for ever, a deep melancholy by degrees consumed her, and gently led to the grave. She sank into the arms of death without a groan.” “And there shall I soon follow her,” exclaimed Verezzi, as a severer pang of anguish and regret darted through his soul. “I caused her death, whose life was far, far dearer to me than my own. But now it is all over, my hopes of happiness in this world are blasted, blasted for ever.” As he said this, a convulsive sigh heaved his breast, and the tears silently rolled down his cheeks; for some time in vain were Matilda’s endeavours to calm him, till at last, mellowed by time, and overcome by reflection, his violent and fierce sorrow was softened into a fixed melancholy. Unremittingly Matilda attended him, and gratified his every wish; she, conjecturing that solitude might be detrimental to him, often entertained parties, and endeavoured by gaiety to drive away his dejection; but if Verezzi’s spirits were elevated by company and merriment, in solitude again they sank, and a deeper melancholy, a severer regret possessed his bosom, for having allowed himself to be momentarily interested by any thing but the remembrance of his Julia; for he felt a soft, a tender and ecstatic emotion of regret, when retrospection portrayed the blissful time long since gone by, while, happy in the society of her whom he idolized, he thought he could never be otherwise than then, enjoying the sweet, the serene delights of association with a congenial mind; he often now amused himself in retracing with his pencil, from memory, scenes which, though in his Julia’s society he had beheld unnoticed, yet were now hallowed by the remembrance of her: for he always associated the idea of Julia with the remembrance of those scenes which she had so often admired, and where, accompanied by her, he had so often wandered. Matilda, meanwhile, firm in the purpose of her soul, unremittingly persevered; she calmed her mind, and though, at intervals, shook by almost superhuman emotions, before Verezzi a fixed serenity, a well-feigned sensibility, and a downcast tenderness, marked her manner. Grief, melancholy, a fixed, a quiet depression of spirits, seemed to have calmed every fiercer feeling when she talked with Verezzi of his lost Julia; but, though subdued for the present, revenge, hate, and the fervour of disappointed love, burned her soul. Often, when she had retired from Verezzi, when he had talked with tenderness, as he was wont, of Julia, and sworn everlasting fidelity to her memory, would Matilda’s soul be tortured by fiercest desperation. One day, when conversing with him of Julia, she ventured to hint, though remotely, at her own faithful and ardent attachment.