no information respecting Luciè, except that she had gone back to France
with her relative, immediately after the melancholy event.

"Gone, without one kind farewell, one word of remembrance!" was the
first bitter reflection of Arthur, on receiving this intelligence. "She,
who might have been all the world to him, whose sunny smiles could have
cheered the darkest hour of affliction,--she was gone! and, amidst the
attractions of wealth, and the charms of society and friends, how soon
might he fade from her remembrance!"

But that was not a time to indulge the regrets of a romantic passion;
the situation of his parents required the support and consolations of
filial tenderness; and no selfish indulgence could, for a moment, detain
him from them. He hastily abandoned the home of his childhood--the
scenes of maturer happiness; and, re-passing the barrier of his native
hills, in a few days rejoined his parents at the sea-port, where they
waited his arrival. They had made arrangements to take passage in the
first vessel which sailed for Boston, and Arthur did not hesitate a
moment to attend them in their arduous undertaking. For a time, indeed,
his active spirit bent beneath the pressure of disappointment, and all
places were alike indifferent to him. But the excitement of new scenes
and pursuits at length roused his interest, and incited him to mental
exertion. With the return of spring also, hopes, which he believed
forever crushed, began to regain their influence in his mind. He was
about to revisit England, on some affairs of consequence; and he
resolved to improve the opportunity to satisfy his anxiety respecting
Luciè, and learn, if possible, what he had still left to hope or fear.
But an alarming illness, which attacked his mother, and left her long in
a dangerous state, obliged him to defer his design; and another winter
passed away, and various circumstances still rendered the voyage