PART I.

_MONFORT HALL_.

CHAPTER I.


My father, Reginald Monfort, was an English gentleman of good family,
who, on his marriage with a Jewish lady of wealth and refinement,
emigrated to America, rather than subject her and himself to the
commentaries of his own fastidious relatives, and the incivilities of a
clique to which by allegiance of birth and breeding he unfortunately
belonged.

Her own family had not been less averse to this union than the
aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her
own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it. As
it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its
brightest ornaments, and the name of "Miriam Harz" was consigned to
silence forever.

Orphaned and independent, this obloquy and oblivion made little
difference to its object, especially when the broad Atlantic was placed,
as it soon was, between her and her people, and new ties and duties
arose in a strange land to bind and interest her feelings.

During her six years of married life, I have every reason to believe
that she was, as it is termed, "perfectly happy," although a mysterious
disease of the nervous centres, that baffled medical skill either to
cure or to name, early laid its grasp upon her, and brought her by slow