the very path taken by the horsemen, or trusted to such scanty and
perilous shelter as the copses in the castle garden might afford him. He
decided on the latter refuge, cleared the low and lonely wall that girded
the demesne, and plunged into a thicket of overhanging oaks and
chestnuts.

At that hour, and in that garden, by the side of a little fountain, were
seated two females: the one of mature and somewhat advanced years; the
other, in the flower of virgin youth. But the flower was prematurely
faded; and neither the bloom, nor sparkle, nor undulating play of
feature, that should have suited her age, was visible in the marble
paleness and contemplative sadness of her beautiful countenance.

"Alas! my young friend," said the elder of these ladies, "it is in these
hours of solitude and calm that we are most deeply impressed with the
nothingness of life. Thou, my sweet convert, art now the object, no
longer of my compassion, but my envy; and earnestly do I feel convinced
of the blessed repose thy spirit will enjoy in the lap of the Mother
Church. Happy are they who die young! but thrice happy they who die in
the spirit rather than the flesh: dead to sin, but not to virtue; to
terror, not to hope; to man, but not to God!"

"Dear senora," replied the young maiden, mournfully, "were I alone on
earth, Heaven is my witness with what deep and thankful resignation I
should take the holy vows, and forswear the past; but the heart remains
human, however divine the hope that it may cherish. And sometimes I
start, and think of home, of childhood, of my strange but beloved father,
deserted and childless in his old age."

"Thine, Leila," returned the elder Senora, "are but the sorrows our