After the first full and unreserved interchange of our souls’ best feelings, our conversation turned upon lighter topics; and I took an opportunity to produce the fruit of my application since we had parted.  Never shall I forget the surprise and delight that animated her beautiful countenance when first she gazed upon the miniature.  The likeness was perfect, even to the minutest shading of her costume; and so forcibly and even childishly did this strike her, that it was with difficulty I could persuade her she was not gazing on some peculiar description of mirror that reflected back her living image.  She expressed a strong desire to retain it; and to this I readily assented:  stipulating only to retain it until my next visit, in order that I might take an exact copy for myself.  With a look of the fondest love, accompanied by a pressure on mine of lips that distilled dewy fragrance where they rested, she thanked me for a gift which she said would remind her, in absence, of the fidelity with which her features had been engraven on my heart.  She admitted, moreover, with a sweet blush, that she herself had not been idle.  Although her pencil could not call up my image in the same manner, her pen had better repaid her exertions; and, in return for the portrait, she would give me a letter she had written to beguile her loneliness on the preceding day.  As she spoke she drew a sealed packet from the bosom of her dress, and placing it in my hand, desired me not to read it until I had returned to my home.  But there was an expression of sweet confusion in her lovely countenance, and a trepidation in her manner, that, half disclosing the truth, rendered me utterly impatient of the delay imposed; and eagerly breaking the seal, I devoured rather than read its contents.

“Accursed madness of recollection!” pursued Wacousta, again striking his brow violently with his hand,—­“why is it that I ever feel thus unmanned while recurring to those letters?  Oh!  Clara de Haldimar, never did woman pen to man such declarations of tenderness and attachment as that too dear but faithless letter of your mother contained.  Words of fire, emanating from the guilelessness of innocence, glowed in every line; and yet every sentence breathed an utter unconsciousness of the effect those words were likely to produce.  Mad, wild, intoxicated, I read the letter but half through; and, as it fell from my trembling hand, my eye turned, beaming with the fires of a thousand emotions, upon that of the worshipped writer.  That glance was more than her own could meet.  A new consciousness seemed to be stirred up in her soul.  Her eye dropped beneath its long and silken fringe—­her cheek became crimson—­her bosom heaved—­and, all confidingness, she sank her head upon my chest, which heaved scarcely less wildly than her own.