scaffold--and the pale majestic face of her lover, darkened by
unutterable pangs of pride and sorrow, were for ever present before her.
Till now, she and Ellinor had always shared the same bed: this Madeline
would not now suffer. In vain Ellinor wept and pleaded. "No," said
Madeline, with a hollow voice; "at night I see him. My soul is alone with
his; but--but,"--and she burst into an agony of tears--"the most
dreadful thought is this, I cannot master my dreams. And sometimes I
start and wake, and find that in sleep I have believed him guilty. Nay, O
God! that his lips have proclaimed the guilt! And shall any living being-
-shall any but God, who reads not words but hearts, hear this hideous
falsehood--this ghastly mockery of the lying sleep? No, I must be alone!
The very stars should not hear what is forced from me in the madness of
my dreams."

But not in vain, or not excluded from her, was that elastic and consoling
spirit of which I have before spoken. As Aram recovered the tenor of his
self-possession, a more quiet and peaceful calm diffused itself over the
mind of Madeline. Her high and starry nature could comprehend those
sublime inspirations of comfort, which lift us from the lowest abyss of
this world to the contemplation of all that the yearning visions of
mankind have painted in another. She would sit, rapt and absorbed for
hours together, till these contemplations assumed the colour of a gentle
and soft insanity. "Come, dearest Madeline," Ellinor would say,--"Come,
you have thought enough; my poor father asks to see you."

"Hush!" Madeline answered. "Hush, I have been walking with Eugene in
heaven; and oh! there are green woods, and lulling waters above, as there
are on earth, and we see the stars quite near, and I cannot tell you how
happy their smile makes those who look upon them. And Eugene never starts
there, nor frowns, nor walks aside, nor looks on me with an estranged and