CHAPTER IV. ARAM'S DEPARTURE.-MADELINE.-EXAGGERATION OF SENMADELINE'S LETTER. TIMENT NATURAL IN LOVE. "Her thoughts as pure as the chaste morning's breath, Detraction Execrated, by Sir J. Suckling. -Urticæ proxima sæpe rosa est."—OVID. "You positively leave us then to-day, Eugene ?" said the Squire. "Indeed," answered Aram, "I hear from my creditor, (now no longer so, thanks to you,) that my relation is so dangerously ill, that if I have any wish to see her alive, I have not an hour to lose. It is the last surviving relative I have in the world." "I can say no more, then," rejoined the Squire, shrugging his shoulders: "When do you expect to return ?" "At least, ere the day fixed for the wedding," answered Aram, with a grave and melancholy smile. "Well, can you find time, think you, to call at the lodging in which my nephew proposed to take up his abode, my old lodging ;-I will give you the address, and inquire if Walter has been heard of there: I confess that I feel considerable alarm on his account. Since that short and hurried letter which I read to you, I have heard nothing of him." "You may rely on my seeing him if in London, and faithfully reporting to you all that I can learn towards removing your anxiety." "I do not doubt it; no heart is so kind as yours, Eugene. You will not depart without receiving the additional sum you are entitled to claim from me, since you think it may be useful to you in London, should you find a favourable opportunity of increasing your annuity. And now I will no longer detain you from taking your leave of Madeline." The plausible story which Aram had invented of the illness and approaching death of his last living relation, was readily believed by the simple family to whom it was told; and Madeline herself checked her tears that she might not, for his sake, sadden a departure that seemed inevitable. Aram accordingly repaired to London that day,— the one that followed the night which witnessed his fearful visit to the "Devil's Crag." It is precisely at this part of my history that I love to pause for a moment; a sort of breathing interval between the cloud that has been long gathering, and the storm that is about to burst. And this interval is not without its fleeting gleam of quiet and holy sunshine. It was Madeline's first absence from her ́ lover since their vows had plighted them to each other; and that first absence, when softened by so many hopes as smiled upon her, is perhaps one of the most touching passages in the history of a woman's love. It is marvellous how many things, unheeded before, suddenly become dear. She then feels what a power of consecration there was in the mere presence of the one beloved; the spot he touched, the book he read, have become a part of him-are no longer inanimate-are inspired, and have a being and a voice. And the heart, too, soothed in discovering so many new treasures, and opening so delightful a world of memory, is not yet acquainted with that weariness-that sense of exhaustion and solitude which are the true pains of absence, and belong to the absence not of hope but regret. "You are cheerful, dear Madeline," said Ellinor, "though you did not think it possible, and he not here!" "I am occupied," replied Madeline, “in discovering how much I loved him.” We do wrong when we censure a certain exaggeration in the sentiments of those who love. True passion is necessarily heightened by its very ardour to an elevation that seems extravagant only to those who cannot feel it. The lofty language of a hero is a part of his character; without that largeness of idea he had not been a hero. With love, it is the same as with glory: what common minds would call natural in sentiment, merely because it is homely, is not natural, except to tamed affections. That is a very poor, nay, a very coarse, love, in which the imagination makes not the greater part. And the Frenchman, who censured the love of his mistress because it was so mixed with the imagination, quarrelled with the body, for the soul which inspired and preserved it. Yet we do not say that Madeline was so possessed by the confidence of her love, that she did not admit the intrusion of a single doubt or fear; when she recalled the frequent gloom and moody fitfulness of her lover-his strange and mysterious communings with self-the sorrow which, at times, as on that Sabbath eve when he wept upon her bosom, appeared suddenly to come upon a naturé so calm and stately, and without a visible cause; when she recalled all these symptoms of a heart not now at rest, it was not possible for her to reject altogether a certain vague and dreary ap |