"Oh! Walter," said Ellinor, weeping bitterly, "you would not know her, so
dreadfully is she altered. I fear--" (here sobs choaked the sister's
voice, so as to leave it scarcely audible)--"that she is not many weeks
for this world!"

"Great God! is it so?" exclaimed Walter, so shocked, that the tree
against which he leant scarcely preserved him from falling to the ground,
as the thousand remembrances of his first love rushed upon his heart.
"And Providence singled me out of the whole world, to strike this blow!"

Despite her own grief, Ellinor was touched and smitten by the violent
emotion of her cousin; and the two young persons, lovers--though love was
at this time the least perceptible feeling of their breasts--mingled
their emotions, and sought, at least to console and cheer each other.

"It may yet be better than our fears," said Ellinor, soothingly. "Eugene
may be found guiltless, and in that joy we may forget all the past."

Walter shook his head despondingly. "Your heart, Ellinor, was always kind
to me. You now are the only one to do me justice, and to see how utterly
reproachless I am for all the misery the crime of another occasions. But
my uncle--him, too, I have not seen for some time: is he well?"

"Yes, Walter, yes," said Ellinor, kindly disguising the real truth, how
much her father's vigorous frame had been bowed by his state of mind.
"And I, you see," added she, with a faint attempt to smile,--"I am, in
health at least, the same as when, this time last year, we were all happy
and full of hope."

Walter looked hard upon that face, once so vivid with the rich colour and