It was indispensibly necessary I should return to M------house, as my father’s visit to Ireland is drawing near; and it was requisite I should receive and answer his letters. At last, therefore, I summoned up resolution to plead my former excuses to the Prince for my absence; who insisted on my immediate return--which I promised should be in a day or two--while the eyes of Glorvina echoed her father’s commands, and mine looked implicit obedience. With what different emotions I now left Inismore, to those which accompanied my last departure! My feelings were then unknown to myself--now I am perfectly aware of their nature. I found M-------- house, as usual, cold, comfortless, and desolate--with a few wretched-looking peasants working languidly about the grounds. In short, everything breathed the deserted mansion of an _absentee_. The evening of my arrival I answered my father’s letters--one from our pleasant but libertine friend D------n,--read over yours three times--went to bed--dreamed of Glorvina--and set off for Inismore the next morning. I rode so hard that I reached the castle about that hour which we usually devoted to the exertions of the pencil. I flew at once to that vast and gloomy room which her presence alone cheers and illumines. Her drawing-desk lay open; she seemed but just to have risen from the chair placed before it; and her work-basket hung on its back. Even this well-known little work-basket is to me an object of interest. I kissed the muslin it contained; and, in raising it, perceived a small book splendidly bound and gilt. I took it up, and read on its cover, marked in letters of gold, “_Brevaire du Sentiment_.” Impelled by the curiosity which this title excited, I opened it--and found beneath its first two leaves several faded snowdrops _stained with blood_. Under them was written in Glorvina’s hand, “Prone to the earth he bowed our pallid flowers-- And caught the drops divine, the purple dyes Tinging the lustre of our native hues.” A little lower in the page was traced, “Culled from the spot where he fell--April the 1st, 17-- Oh! how quickly my bounding heart told me who was that _he_, whose vital drops had stained these _treasured_ blossoms, thus “tinging the lustre of their native hues.” While the sweetest association of ideas convinced me that these were the identical flowers which Glorvina had hallowed with a tear as she watched by the couch of him with whose blood they were polluted.