Two hours had elapsed before the venerable priest again sought the two objects dearest to his heart; he found Glorvina overwhelmed with soft emotion, her cheek covered with blushes, and her hand clasped in that of the interesting invalid, whose flushing colour and animated eyes spoke the return of health and happiness; not indeed confirmed, but fed by sanguine hope; such hope as the heart of a mourning child could give to the object of her heart’s first passion, in that era of filial grief, when sorrow is mellowed by reason, and soothed by religion into a tender but not ungracious melancholy. The good priest embraced and blessed them alternately, then, seated between them, read aloud the letter of Lord M. TO THE HON. HORATIO M. Since human happiness, like every other feeling of the human heart, loses its poignancy by reiteration, its fragrance with its bloom; let me not (while the first fallen dew of pleasure hangs fresh upon the flower of your existence) seize on those precious moments which _Hope_, rescued from the fangs of despondency, and bliss, succeeding to affliction, claim as their own. Brief be the detail which intrudes on the hour of newborn joy, and short the narrative which holds captive the attention, while the heart, involved in its own enjoyments, denies its interest. It is now unnecessary for me fully to explain all the motives which led me to appear at the castle of Inismore in a fictitious character. Deeply interested for a people whose national character I had hitherto viewed through the false medium of prejudice; anxious to make it my study in a situation, and under circumstances, which as an English landholder, as the Earl of M------, was denied me, and to turn the stream of my acquired information to that channel which would tend to the promotion of the happiness and welfare of those whose destiny, in some measure, was consigned to my guidance:--solicitous to triumph over the hereditary prejudices of my hereditary enemy; to seduce him into amity, and force him to _esteem_ the man he _hated_; while he unconsciously became his accessary in promoting the welfare of those of his humble compatriots who dwelt within the sphere of our mutual observation. Such were the _motives_ which principally guided my late apparently romantic adventure; would that the _means_ had been equally laudable. Received into the mansion of the generous but incautious Prince, as a proscribed and unfortunate wanderer, I owed my reception to his humanity rather than his prudence; and when I told him that I threw my life into his power, his _honour_ became bound for its security, though his principles condemned the conduct which he believed had effected its just forfeiture.