The baseness of her desertion grew every moment more vivid; and how openly must she have renounced him, when even the public journals had become aware of her intended alliance, which must have been a measure of her own free will, as her father Sir Allan would never control her affections, and the age of forced marriages was passed away, or existed only in the pages of romance. Love and jealousy, sorrow, pride, and a feeling of helplessness at the great distance which separated him from Britain, passed rapidly through his mind; and during the mental agony and tumult of the first few hours, he forgot Catalina and the honourable struggles he had made with himself to withstand the witchery of her beauty, until the recollection of it rushed fully upon him, raising him in his own estimation, and lessening the fickle Alice in an equal degree. He hastily threw open his baggage-trunk, and producing writing materials, commenced a letter, in which he meant to upbraid her bitterly, and take a haughty and sad farewell of her for ever. But so great was his agitation, so fast did his ideas crowd upon each other, and so much were they mingled together and confused, that he wrote only rhapsodies in incoherent sentences, and sheet after sheet was filled, torn up, and committed to the flames; until at last it flashed upon his mind that there were no means at present of transmitting a letter, and he abandoned the attempt altogether. Whenever he thought of Catalina, he felt more consoled for the loss of Alice; but yet the deep-rooted affection, the cherished sentiment of years which he felt for her, was a very different feeling from the temporary admiration with which the Spanish lady had impressed him; but ideas of a prouder, and perhaps more healing kind, came to his aid.