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scenes, which most powerfully recalled the images of past times. Among these was the fishing-house; and, to indulge still more the affectionate melancholy of the visit, she took thither her lute, that she might again hear there the tones, to which St. Aubert and her mother had so often delighted to listen. She went alone, and at that 'still hour of the evening, which is so soothing to fancy and to grief. The last time she had been here she was in company with Monsieur and Madame St. Aubert, a few days preceding that, on which the latter was seized with a fatal illness. Now, when Emily again entered the woods, that surrounded the building, they awakened so forcibly the memory of former times, that her resolution yielded for a moment to excess of grief.-She stopped, leaned for support against a tree, and wept for some minutes, before she had recovered herself sufficiently to proceed. The little path, that led to the building, was overgrown with grass, and the flowers which St. Aubert had scattered carelessly along the border were almost choked with weeds-the tall thistle-the fox-glove, and the nettle. She often paused to look on the desolate spot, now so silent and forsaken, and when, with a trembling hand, she opened the door of the fishing-house, Ah! said she, every thing remains as when I left it last-left it with those who never must return! She went to a window, that overhung the rivulet, and leaning over it, with her eyes fixed on the current, was soon lost in melancholy reverie. The lute she had brought lay forgotten beside her; the mournful sighing of the breeze as it waved the high pines above, and its softer whispers among the osiers, that bowed upon the banks below, was a kind of music more in unison with her feelings. It did not vibrate on the chords of unhappy memory, but was soothing to the heart as the voice of pity. She continued to muse, unconscious of the gloom of evening, and that the sun's last light trembled on the heights above, and would probably have remained so much longer, if a sudden footstep, without the building, had not alarmed her attention, and first made her recollect that she was unprotected. In the next moment, a door opened, and a stranger appeared, who stopped on perceiving Emily, and then began to apologize for his intrusion. But Emily, at the sound of his voice, lost her fear in a stronger emotion; its tones were familiar to her ear, and, though she could not readily distinguish through the dusk the features of the person who spoke, she felt a remembrance too strong to be distrusted.

He repeated his apology, and Emily then said something in reply, when the stranger, eagerly advancing, exclaimed, Good God! can it be surely I am not mistaken-madamoiselle St. Aubert-is it not?

It is indeed, said Emily, who was confirmed in her first conjecture, for she now distinguished the countenance of

Valancourt, lighted up with still more than its usual animation. A thousand painful recollections crowded to her mind, and the effort, which she made to support herself, only served to increase her agitation. Valancourt, meanwhile, having inquired anxiously after her health, and expressed his hopes, that M. St. Aubert had found benefit from travelling, learned from the flood of tears, which she could no longer repress, the fatal truth. He led her to a seat, and sat down by her, while Emily continued to weep, and Valancourt to hold the hand, which she was unconscious he had taken, till it was wet with tears, which grief for St. Aubert, and sympathy for herself had called forth.

I feel, said he, at length, I feel how insufficient all attempt at consolation must be on this subject. I can only mourn with you, for I cannot doubt the source of your tears. Would to God I were mistaken!

Emily could still answer only by tears, till she rose, and begged they might leave the melancholy spot, when Valancourt, though he saw her feebleness, could not offer to detain her, but took her arm within his, and led her from the fishing house. They walked silently through the woods, Valancourt anxious to know, yet fearing to ask any particu. lars concerning St. Aubert; and Emily too much distressed to converse. After sometime, however, she acquired fortitude enough to speak of her father, and to give a brief account of the manner of his death; during which recital, Valancourt's countenance betrayed strong emotion, and, when he heard that St. Aubert had died on the road, and that Emily had been left among strangers, he pressed her hand between his, and involuntarily exclaimed, Why was I not there! but. in the next moment recollected himself, for he immediately returned to the mention of her father; till, perceiving that her spirits were exhausted, he gradually changed the subject, and spoke of himself. Emily thus learned, that, after they had parted, he had wandered for sometime, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and had then returned through Languedoc into Gascony, which was his native province, and where he usually resided.

When he had concluded his little narrative, he sunk into a silence, which Emily was not disposed to interrupt, and It continued, till they reached the gate of the chateau, when he stopped, as if he had known this to be the limit of his walk. Here, saying, that it was his intention to return to Estuviere on the following day, he asked her if she would permit him to take leave of her in the morning; and Emily, perceiving that she could not reject an ordinary civility, without expressing by her refusal an expectation of something more, was compelled to answer, that she should be at

home.

She passed a melancholy evening, during which the retrospect of all that had happened, since she had seen Valan

court, would rise to her imagination; and the scene of her father's death appeared in tints as fresh, as if it had passed on the preceding day. She remembered particularly the earnest and solemn manner, in which he had required her to destroy the manuscript papers, and, awakening from the lethargy, in which sorrow had held her, she was shocked to think she had not yet obeyed him, and determined, that another day should not reproach her with the neglect.

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CHAPTER X.

Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?

MACBETH.

On the next morning, Emily ordered a fire to be lighted in the stove of the chamber, where St. Aubert used to sleep; and, as soon as she had breakfasted, went thither to burn the papers. Having fastened the door to prevent interruption, she opened the closet where they were concealed, as she entered which, she felt an emotion of unusual awe, and stood for some moments surveying it, trembling, and almost afraid to remove the board. There was a great chair in one corner of the closet, and, opposite to it, stood the table, at which she had seen her father sit, on the evening that preceded his departure, looking over, with so much emotion, what she believed to be these very papers.

The solitary life, which Emily had led of late, and the melancholy subjects, on which she had suffered her thoughts to dwell, had rendered her at times sensible to the 'thickcoming fancies' of a mind greatly enervated. It was lamentable, that her excellent understanding should have yielded, even for a moment, to the reveries of superstition, or rather to those starts of imagination, which deceive the senses into what can be called nothing less than momentary madness. Instances of this temporary failure of mind had more than once occurred since her return home; particularly when, wandering through this lonely mansion in the evening twilight, she had been alarmed by appearances, which would have been unseen in her more cheerful days. To this infirm state of her nerves may be attributed what she imagined, when her eyes glancing a second time on the arm-chair, which stood in an obscure part of the closet, the countenance of her dead father appeared there. Emily stood fixed for a moment to the floor, after which she left the closet. Her spirits, however, soon returned; she reproached herself with the weakness of thus suffering interruption in an act of serious importance, and again opened the door. By the directions which St. Aubert had given her, she readily found the board he had described in an op

posite corner of the closet, near the window; she distinguished also the line he had mentioned, and, pressing it as he had bade her, it slid down, and disclosed the bundle of papers, together with some scattered ones, and the purse of louis. With a trembling hand she removed them-replaced the board-paused a moment-and was rising from the floor, when, on looking up, there appeared to her alarmed fancy the same countenance in the chair. The illusion (another instance of the unhappy effect which solitude and grief had gradually produced upon her mind) subdued her spirits; she rushed forward into the chamber, and sunk almost senseless into a chair. Returning reason soon overcame the dreadful, but pitiable attack of imagination, and she turned to the papers; though still with so little recol. lection, that her eyes involuntarily settled on the writing of some loose sheets which lay open, and she was uncon-scious that she was transgressing her father's strict injunction, till a sentence of dreadful import awakened her attention and her memory together. She hastily put the papers from her; but the words, which had roused equally her curiosity and terror, she could not dismiss from her thoughts. So powerfully had they affected her that she even could not resolve to destroy the papers immediately; and the more she dwelt on the circumstance, the more it inflamed her imagination. Urged by the most forcible, and apparently the most necessary, curiosity to inquire farther, concerning the terrible and mysterious subject to which she had seen an allusion, she began to lament her promise to destroy the papers. For a moment she even doubted whether it could justly be obeyed, in contradiction to such reasons as there appeared to be for farther information; but the delusion was momentary: I have given a solemn promise, said she, to observe a solemn injunction, and it is not my business to argue, but to obey. Let me hasten to remove the temptation that would destroy my innocence, and embitter my life with the consciousness of irremediable guilt, while I have strength to reject it.

Thus reanimated with a sense of her duty, she completed the triumph of integrity over temptation, more foreible than any she had ever known, and consigned the papers to the flames. Her eyes watched them as they slowly consumed she shuddered at the recollection of the sentence she had just seen, and at the certainty, that the only opportunity of explaining it was then passing away forever. It was long after this that she recollected the purse; and as she was depositing it, unopened, in a cabinet, pereeiving that it contained something of a size larger than coin, she examined it. His hand deposited them here, said she, as she kissed some pieces of the coin, and wetted them with her tears-his hand, which is now dust! At the bottom of the purse was a small packet; which having taken

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out, and unfolded paper after paper, she found to be an ivory case, containing the miniature of a lady! She started. The same, said she, my father wept over! On examining the countenance, she could recollect no person that it resembled: it was of uncommon beauty; and was characterized by an expression of sweetness, shaded with sorrow, and tempered by resignation.

St. Aubert had given no directions concerning this picture, nor had even named it; she therefore thought herself justified in preserving it. More than once remembering his manner, when he had spoken of the marchioness of Villeroi, she felt inclined to believe that this was her resemblance; yet there appeared no reason why he should have preserved a picture of that lady, or having preserved it, why he should lament over it in a manner so striking and affecting as she had witnessed on the night preceding his departure.

Emily still gazed on the countenance, examining its features; but she knew not where to detect the charm that captivated her attention, and inspired sentiments of such love and pity. Dark brown hair played carelessly along the open forehead; the nose was rather inclined to aquiline; the lips, spoke in a smile, but it was a melancholy one; the eyes were blue, and were directed upwards, with an expression of peculiar meekness; while the soft cloud of the brow spoke the fine sensibility of the temper.

Emily was roused from the musing mood into which the picture had thrown her, by the closing of the garden gate; and, on turning her eyes to the window, she saw Valan court, coming towards the chateau. Her spirits, agitated by the subjects that had lately occupied her mind, she felt unprepared to see him, and remained a few moments in the chamber to recover herself.

When she met him in the parlour, she was struck with the change that appeared in his air and countenance since they had parted in Rousillon, which twilight and the distress she suffered on the preceding evening had prevented her from observing. But dejection and languor disappeared, for a moment, in the smile that now enlightened his countenance on perceiving her. You see, said he, I have availed myself of the permission with which you honoured me-of bidding you farewell, whom I had the happiness of meeting only yesterday.

Emily smiled faintly, and, anxious to say something, asked if he had been long in Gascony. A few days only, replied Valancourt, while a blush passed over his cheek. I engaged in a long ramble after I had the misfortune of parting with the friends who had made my wanderings among the Pyrenees so delightful.

A tear came to Emily's eyes as Valancourt said this; which he observed, and anxious to draw off her attention

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