“I will not upbraid you, Mary, although you have crushed my fondest—my dearest hopes! Fool that I was, I dreamed that the Mary of my boyhood was still the same—that what she _professed_ in other days, she would prove in my ripened years—that her gentle spirit yet retained its recollection of one with whom was spent the darkest portion of her brief existence! Do you remember that night when the demon of the storm swept the bosom of the dark Atlantic, and I bore you——but no! not that; but surely you still retain the memory of that kind, good old man, who took us in our destitution and gave us a home, and who, when we were seated at his social board, would moralize upon our melancholy story, and bid us love one another, for it seemed as if Providence so willed it in the arrangement of our destinies. And oh! how often, when wandering along the shores of Barnstable, have we mingled our tears when we looked out upon the great sea, the sepulchre of all we loved, and cheated Sorrow of its triumph, in gilding with Hope's brightest pencillings a radiant and sunny future—and then, that evening, when in the holy hush of nature, and in the presence of none save our God, you vowed remembrance, and gave me a ringlet of your own raven hair. I return it, Mary, for I may not retain it after the fatal proofs of your feelings towards me, which inadvertently I overheard this night. Alas! that such things should be—that you, whom I have loved—how fervently and deeply let my present agony pourtray, should speak of me as of one——but I will not upbraid, but bless you, Mary; even in your heartlessness will my prayers be as fervent for your welfare, as when in other years I watched your girlhood beyond the ocean. Farewell! Heiress of Marne, farewell—_forever!_” Her attendants, upon entering their mistress' chamber on the ensuing morning, found her lying insensible upon her couch, the letter of Harwood compressed within her grasp. Did she awake to better feelings, and was the film of ingratitude and deceit rent from her heart? Alas! that selfishness should prevail over the finer impulses of our nature, and the perspective of a coronet in woman's eye sway ascendant over the homely aspect of humble wedlock! Who was Henry Harwood, that he should aspire to the hand of the favorite of Marie Antoinette, and on the plea of having performed a trifling act of humanity, _dare_ thus to address the loveliest woman in the Court of Louis? One month, and Marmonti, amid the beauty and chivalry of France, and honored by the presence of royalty, wedded the fair Destraix! Marmonti's lineage was noble—ay, princely! In his veins there ran the tide of the House of Bourbon. Marmonti was the friend of his king!