“Since my Alexis withers in the tomb,
    Untimely fades, nor sees a second bloom;
    Ye hills and groves no more your landscapes please,
    Nor give my soul one interval of ease;
    Delight and joy forever flee your shades,—­
    And mournful care your solitude invades.”

“But, my dear Mr. Denham,” he said, as he turned from contemplating the scene without, and resumed his seat near the invalid’s couch, “though I cannot promise that Nature will afford you the elixir you require, your case is not, cannot be hopeless, while there is balm in Gilead, while there is a Physician there.”

“I know well what you would say, Arthur Bernard, and it is easy for you to speak thus, who have never known the horrors of remorse; who have never been haunted by the vision of a sweet face, drowned in tears, whose look of affection was repelled by coldness and harshness.  Ah, had you known my dearly loved Agnes as I have; had you watched from infancy each expanding grace, until she grew to be your heart’s idol; had you loved her with a love like mine”—­

Arthur Bernard groaned involuntarily, but the old man unheeding went on.

“And then, because her pure mind could not be content to feed on the husks of worldly vanity, and sought for more congenial nourishment, banish her from your presence, for the very cause that should have rendered her dear beyond all price, and that banishment to have such a termination; to think that the wild salt waves should cover my darling, that the winds should be her requiem, that I shall never hear that sweet voice pronounce my forgiveness,—­oh, it is too much, too much for human nature to bear, though I deserve it all.

“Talk not to me, Arthur Bernard,” and the invalid, in the energy of passion, half-raised himself from the couch, “talk not to me, I beseech you, of balm in Gilead, or of a Physician there; others, who have not sinned as I have done, may find forgiveness, but as for me, unless the treacherous sea restore my darling to my arms, there is never more peace or comfort for me, but my gray hairs shall go down with sorrow to the tomb.”

He sank back exhausted by the violence of his emotions, and silence reigned through the apartment for a few moments, its two occupants seemingly absorbed in painful thought.

To Arthur the reflection of the almost certain destiny that had befallen her who had, unconsciously to himself, shared so large a portion of his affections, was indeed fraught with anguish; the void she had left he felt, day by day, could never be replaced, and in reference to a passion at once so absorbing and constant, he might well have adopted, as embodying his own experience, the language of the poet:—­

    “It was life’s whole emotion, a storm in its might,
    ’Twas deep as the ocean, and silent as night;
    It swept down life’s flowers, the fragile and fair,
    The heart had no powers from passion to spare.”