and faith that only belongs to the purer essence of which they are composed.  But when this attraction of the ethereal part of the being is aided by the feelings that have been warmed by an interest so tender as that which the hearts of both the maidens felt in a common object, its power is not only stronger, but quicker, in making itself felt.  So much was already known by each of the other’s character, fortunes, and hopes (always with the exception of Adelheid’s most sacred secret, which Sigismund cherished as a deposit by far too sacred to be shared even with his sister) that the meeting under no circumstances could have been that of strangers, and their mutual knowledge came as an assistant to break down the barriers of those forms which were so irksome to their longings for a freer interchange of feeling and thought.  Adelheid possessed too much intellectual tact to have recourse to the every-day language of consolation.  When she did speak, which, as became her superior rank and less embarrassed situation, she was the first to do, it in general but friendly allusions.

“Thou wilt go with us to Italy, in the morning,” she said, drying her eyes; “my father quits Blonay, in company with the Signor Grimaldi, with to-morrow’s sun, and thou wilt be of our company?”

“Where thou wilt—­anywhere with thee—­anywhere to hide my shame!”

The blood mounted to the temples of Adelheid; her air even appeared imposing to the eyes of the artless and unpractised Christine, as she answered—­

“Shame is a word that applies to the mean and mercenary, to the vile and unfaithful,” she said, with womanly and virtuous indignation; “but not to thee, love.”

“O! do not, do not condemn him;” whispered Christine, covering her face with her hands.  “He has found himself unequal to bearing the burthen of our degradation, and he should be spoken of in pity rather than with hatred.”

Adelheid was silent; but she regarded the poor trembling girl, whose head now nestled in her bosom, with melancholy concern.

“Didst thou know him well?” she asked in a low tone, following rather the chain of her own thoughts, than reflecting on the nature of the question she put.  “I had hoped that this refusal would bring no other pain than the unavoidable mortification which I fear belongs to the weakness of our sex and our habits.”

“Thou knowest not how dear preference is to the despised!—­how cherished the thought of being loved becomes to those, who, out of their own narrow limits of natural friends, have been accustomed to meet only with contempt and aversion!  Thou hast always been known, and courted, and happy!  Thou canst not know how dear it is to the despised to seem even to be preferred!”

“Nay, say not this, I pray thee!” answered Adelheid, hurriedly, and with a throb of anguish at her heart; “there is little in this life that speaks fairly for itself.  We are not always what we seem; and if we were, and far more miserable than anything but vice can make us, there is another state of being, in which justice—­pure, unalloyed justice—­will be done.”